OWC Mercury Elite Pro
7,200 r.p.m. FireWire hard drive
120 gigabytes
$279, Other World Computing
www.macsales.com
For Macintosh OS 9 and OS X.1

Mac users likely will just break into smiles when they plug this high-speed hard drive into the FireWire ports on their machines. The Mac just sees that a portable hard drive is attached and an icon appears on the desktop.

Windows users face more of a challenge, but this reviewer got Other World Computing's Mercury drive to work properly with Windows by using the MediaFour MacDrive 5 translation software, available for a $50 download at www.mediafour.com.

And what a rewarding experience it is running a massive 120 gigabyte hard drive capable of moving back and forth between Windows and Macintosh platforms simply by unplugging it from one machine and plugging it into another.

Even with the $50 extra for software, the $279 OWC Mercury drive is a dramatic bargain for a Windows drive, belting out ultrafast performance. The price is sweeter still if you're a Mac-only user.

For example, one can use this removable hard drive to create even the most complex iMovie or Final Cut Pro movie, storing everything on the Mercury and still running software as fast as possible.

Users of Mac OS X are advised on OWC's MacSales.com site how to download drivers for Apple's latest operating system, and this reviewer found readily helpful technical support during the evaluation process.