Freecom has been fairly busy in the portable hard drive market in recent times, frequently updating its range with new designs and key benefits. The Mobile Drive CLS on test initially appears to be a bog-standard slimline external drive, but as it happens the company has a slightly different purpose in mind.

Touted as an ideal solution for “organising and categorizing data”, the CLS is aimed at those who would look to store different types or different versions of data on multiple drives, either for convenience or security purposes. Each unit comes with a plastic carry case that includes an index card and a short USB cable for connection, and the drive itself has a removable piece of card to label the contents. It's also nicely rubberised to improve grip and help prevent knocks and scratches, and is impressively slimline and solid in design.

Connecting the drive is predictably straightforward and all the software you'd need is preloaded, along with documentation. Nero BackItUp is the tool of choice for creating, scheduling and automating backup sets and works well in walking you through the processes of selecting data, opting for incremental or differential backups and choosing encryption and compression settings if required.

Data can be synchronised manually with a single click and Nero RescueAgent, which comes as part of the suite, can recover files stored on CDs, DVDs, hard drives and memory sticks. It's a powerful and versatile tool that complements the CLS nicely, and trumps many competitors who can tend to offer more convoluted or less powerful solutions.

Freecom also supplies a utility called “Green Button”, which claims environmental benefits by allowing you to suspend a disc after a chosen period of inactivity. While we doubt it'll make much of an impact on global climate change, it also offers the benefit of prolonging the life of the drive.

With everything set up and running we noticed some relatively fast speeds of between 23 and 28MB/s when transferring data over the USB 2.0 interface, and while this is hardly ground-breaking it's reassuring to know that the CLS is up there with some of the more efficient alternatives doing the rounds.

Having said that, you are paying a lot for the privilege of what initially appears to be decent performance, a tidy design and some effective software. £70 for a 250GB external drive isn't cheap, so to justify a purchase it seems as though the “key differentiator” of the CLS would be essential.

By this we mean the purchase of multiple drives in order to keep backups separated over more than one unit. To facilitate this advantage, Freecom offers an optional three-port powered dock for £15.99, which is tailored for use with the CLS and, in tandem with the benefits of Nero BackItUp, would add a distinct degree of convenience in refreshing backups across multiple drives automatically, taking the hassle out of switching units round and messing with cables.

If this is the sort of thing you'd find beneficial then the price premium involved may well be worth paying, particularly with solid performance. However, those looking for a bog-standard backup solution will find cheaper, if less portable and versatile solutions elsewhere.

Verdict
Despite being a very capable portable backup solution in its own right, the price of the Freecom CLS means that you'd have to get good use out of the “multiple drive” angle the company is pushing and this would probably involve the purchase of the optional dock. This is an interesting and convenient way to manage multiple backup sets, but you'd have to get enough from this key benefit to justify the price.

Company: Freecom

Contact: +31 (0)70 336 76 00

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