Photography Accessories

Review: Memorex SlimDrive Portable Hard Disk Drive 500GB

Chris Gampat
No Comments
11/05/2010
3 Mins read
Memorex hard drive

Last Updated on 07/20/2011 by Chris Gampat

Every now and again, I’m sent random but potentially cool products for review. The 500GB Memorex Slimdriveappeared on my front stoop a couple of weeks ago and I began the testing. After getting through packaging that reminded me of trying to pry an elevator door open with your bare hands combined with examining a man’s prostate, the kit comprised of a simple but elegant hard drive with a very small USB cable.

Tech Specs

The company’s website says, “The 2.5″ Memorex SlimDrive provides desktop, laptop and netbook users a quick, convenient storage solution for preserving digital memories and data. An ideal complement to any PC or Mac, the Slim Drive comes with Arcsoft Total Media Backup software for quick, effortless data backup.”

– 5400 RPM

– 480Mb/sec USB 2.0

– 8MB data buffer

– Automatically backs your photos up on your computer without any hassel.

– PC and Mac compatible

How to Use It

According to the company, what remains of the packaging and scouring around Google all you need to do is plug it into your computer and it will find all your photos then proceed to back them up. The pitch makes it seem ideal for anyone that isn’t very tech savvy or that just wants this all done in a hurry: like busy photographers.

In my experience, it was actually dead wrong.

Performance/Field Instructional

When it comes to photo editing and productivity, I’m an Apple guy. Though I wear this badge proudly, I’m not pretentious about it but instead happy to hear when companies announce products that are Mac compatible. Then the Slimdrivewas plugged into my MacBookand I got this screen.

This was in no way expected. I tried other processes: initializing the drive, putting it into another USB slot, praying to Steve Jobs—and none of it worked.

Then I proceeded to my PC.

After plugging the hard drive in, it seemed to show a bit of promise.

Clicking on Autorun didn’t work as is seen above and so I clicked on the setup.

So far so good it seemed.

Cool, so it started up and asked me to backup now. After clicking this, the backup was almost instant. The hard drive needs to be given lots of credit for being very, very fast.

Then I went through the files on the hard drive that were backed up and was unpleasantly surprised. It only backed up the photos in my Pictures folder. In fact, it seemed to back up that entire folder. On my desktop, I’ve got clipboard JPEG files and loads of other RAWs and JPEGs in other folders which the Slimdrivedidn’t even touch.

And so I give users of this product a huge warning: if you’re going to use it ensure that all your photos are in the pictures folder. Mine aren’t because I’m a manual control freak that likes to keep everything in its own separate and organized way.

Would I recommend it? If most people put their pictures in their pictures folder on their desktop, sure. For Mac users, we’re screwed. I tried troubleshooting on their website through the support section and it constantly brought me back to the product page. It was actually quite frustrating. Even worse, the company didn’t send me a press release or press contact info for extra aid.

The Slimdrivedoesn’t get my rating of approval for hard drive backup.

Please Support The Phoblographer

We love to bring you guys the latest and greatest news and gear related stuff. However, we can’t keep doing that unless we have your continued support. If you would like to purchase any of the items mentioned, please do so by clicking our links first and then purchasing the items as we then get a small portion of the sale to help run the website.

Also, please follow us on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

500gb apple backup hard drive memorex photo Photography review slimdive storage
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.