Edge Technology DiskGo 200879PE Hard Drive Review

My wife has a serious digital photography habit that consumes disk space by the gigabyte. We needed a large external drive to take the burden off the small internal drive built into her laptop and we filled that need with the DiskGo 200879PE 400 GB external hard drive from Edge Tech.

What It Is

The DiskGo 200879PE is more than just an external hard drive, which are so common and cheap as to be considered commodities. In addition to having a 400 GB hard drive, the DiskGo 200879PE has two other interesting features: a two-slot card reader and a two-port USB hub. Having all three of these in one location works perfectly for the way she uses her computer and this external hard drive. Otherwise, the DiskGo 200879PE looks and acts much like any other external hard drive. 

On the front panel are two memory card slots, one for CompactFlash (CF) and the other for Secure Digital (SD) and Memory Stick (MS). Next to these are two USB ports. The DiskGo 200879PE is a USB 2 device, which means it has a theoretical data transfer rate of 480 Mbps. The unit's front panel also has a blue pilot light that flickers to indicate the drive is in use. A button next to the CompactFlash port ejects the CF card. The 400 GB drive inside the DiskGo 200879PE rotates at 7,200 RPM, which is fast enough to allow for quick data access. 

The back panel of the DiskGo 200879PE has an on/off switch for the drive, an on/off switch for the USB hub, a USB connector and a power connector. The unit comes with a "wall-wart" style power supply -- the hard drive portion is not powered by the USB port on the computer. However, the USB hub and card reader portion of the drive are powered by the computer's USB port, which means that I can use the card reader and USB ports when the DiskGo 200879PE is switched off. The unit also comes with a four-foot USB 2 cable.

I paid a rather high $229 at Costco's online store for the DiskGo 200879PE. Since I bought it a couple months ago, the price has dropped and Edge Tech now shows a list price of $189. I was willing to pay extra for the added value of the USB hub and memory card reader.

Using It

My computers all have Windows XP, so connecting the DiskGo 200879PE was no problem. It took the computer about a minute to do the necessary handshaking with all the components inside the drive, then it was ready to use.

The drive's speed is excellent. We moved about 20 GB of files from the laptop to the DiskGo 200879PE in about 15 minutes. That sounds like a long time but 20 GB is a lot of files.  I have no speed complaints with this unit.

The memory card reader works out perfectly for us. With the DiskGo 200879PE attached, we can load both CompactFlash and SD cards into their respective slots and use Windows Explorer to transfer image files from the cards onto the unit's hard drive. The convenience of these front-panel memory card slots and USB ports is a big reason why I paid extra for the DiskGo 200879PE and they have worked out quite nicely.

I have not had any problems with the DiskGo 200879PE. All its features were quickly recognized by my computer and have worked properly for several months of regular use.

Summary

You can never have enough storage. That's certainly the case in my household, where it's not unusual for my wife and I to each take 250 pictures in a day. Inputting, holding and managing all that data takes flexibility and the DiskGo 200879PE is the most flexible external hard drive I have ever used. With its convenient memory card slots and USB ports, this drive saves a little time and takes away some of the fussing we used to have with our pictures.

It's been nine months or so since I bought the Edge Tech DiskGo 200879PE external hard drive and I have not been disappointed. I recommend it.