Product Review: Hitachi Mobile LifeStudio Plus 500GB

Confession: When my daughter was about a year old, we had a major computer crash. Guess who hadn't backed up the previous two months of photos at that point? Yeah. Since that moment, I have backed up every photo I've taken via CD and a second computer. It has been a major pain, but since I wasn't looking for a divorce, I went through the process every time a photo was taken.

Enter the Hitachi Mobile LifeStudio Plus 500GB:


Looks sexy, doesn't it? With its sleek design and glossy black finish, it kind of gives you a techonological boner.

The Hitachi Mobile LifeStudio Plus 500GB is an external hard drive equipped with a 4GB USB thumb drive (that's the part that reads "LifeStudio" on the dock). It's magnetized, so it just snaps right into the dock. Very cool and makes transferring documents easy.

Transfers are easy and quick. The software installed on the Hitachi Mobile LifeStudio Plus 500GB is smart enough to search your entire computer for images, mp3s, and documents (including Word, Excel, and pdfs) and put them on the drive.

You can view the files you've uploaded via a 3D wall display. My daughter loves skimming through our images this way. If you use Facebook to connect with your friends and family like we do, each photo has a Facebook button at the bottom that, once clicked, uploads the photo to your Facebook acouunt. Cool, huh?

Here's a video that shows the 3D Wall:



In summary, I love this thing. It's sleek as hell, fast, and will keep the divorce lawyers at bay for the time being.

Disclaimer: I was given a Hitachi LifeStudio Plus 500 GB to review.