Clickfree Portable Backup Drive review (250GB)

Editors' note: We gave the Clickfree portable hard drive a one point boost in the "Features" rating to reflect cross compatibility with Macs and Windows OS. According to the company, our test unit was an early build, and all Clickfree Drives now support both operating systems.

The final rating of this review has been updated to reflect a discrepancy in calculation. None of the individual scores have changed.

You shouldn't have to settle for incrementally timed backups on your external hard drive. If you're using a portable solution to safeguard your crucial information, the Clickfree Portable Backup Drive makes it easy to keep a constant backup on hand. There's no setup (unless you count plugging it into your computer); the software built into the drive runs automatically and finds, organizes, and ultimately backs up all data on the host computer. We can't complain about the $180 price tag for our 320GB model, nor are we disappointed with its speedy performance. Despite a few small hiccups, we give Clickfree a high five for successfully smoothing out the wrinkles on a previously painful backup process.

Design and features
The Clickfree Portable Backup Drive is available in several capacities ranging from 120GB up to 500GB. Each uses the standard 2.5-inch hard disk spinning at 5,400 rotations per minute with 8MB of cache. We noticed the drive is much lighter than most of the other external drives that make their way into our lab. Our 0.38 pound Clickfree drive weighs a full 0.22 pound lighter than the hefty Iomega eGo Camo. The device is also small in stature at 4.52 inches tall, 2.9 inches wide, and 0.67 inche deep.

Unlike other portable hard drives, such as the Iomega eGo Brown Leather, the Clickfree drive requires zero effort to back up files on a host computer. Once you plug the drive in, the Clickfree connects and assigns two of the same file letters to the host drive: one for the software's executable file and another for drag-and-drop data dumps. Then, the device automatically launches its preinstalled proprietary software, so each time you connect the drive you can view detailed information about both the host and the drive contents and alter the backup settings to choose exactly what types of files you want the drive to protect. You can even specify entire subfolders to check for new files and update every time. Alternatively, there's an option to make a clone copy of the desktop drive. You can't copy over files onto the drive while the backup is in progress, but we're impressed that the Clickfree is capable of copying over an entire Microsoft Outlook database, including calendar events, phone numbers, and archived mail. The drive can view and copy hidden files, raw format images, and other uncommon file types as well.