And now for something completely different - a portable hard drive!

How often have you wanted to back up your data but can’t be bothered feeding 30 DVD’s into the computer?

Shintaro make a lovely little enclosure for a laptop hard drive. It is about the size of a packet of smokes and requires no power. You just plug it in the USB and away you go.

Because it takes a laptop drive, it is designed to be portable. Laptop drives being more rugged. And you can get drives from 20-200Gb so this thing holds as much (or more) than your computer!

I selected the Shintaro product after seeing lots of distraught Uni students bringing in their plastic drive enclosures with broken connectors. They just about cry as they tell you their thesis is on the drive and they have to have it. The plastic ones break too easily. The Shintaro is made of aluminum and I haven’t seen a busted one yet.

The enclosure is $49 and a drive is about $150 so the whole thing’ll cost you less than $200.

You can get one at Active Electronics or PCM.