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The amount of data that people push around on their computers, local networks and the Internet is getting larger and larger. Once upon a time, downloading a megabyte of data was an arduous task, one that meant you had to go away from the computer and grab a coffee or watch TV for a while. Now with cheap technologies such as ADSL, cable internet and CDR burners, it's become easier to shift large amounts of data easily.

But these devices aren't always the best solution. CDR's only take up to 800mb and cheap DVD-R drives (and the media) are still a while away, ZIP disks are even worse, JAZ drives had the capacity, but you had to lug around cartridges and with the data capping on most broadband connections, in Australia at any rate, few people want to download masses of data.

So what's a solution for making large amounts of data easily portable?

USB connected hard drives, baby. That's what.

Buy a USB hard drive case, install the drive, and you've got a reusable portable data storage device that has far more storage than a single CDR can ever hope for, and since USB is a standard interface on most computers now, you'll literally be able to take the drive almost anywhere and have your data at your fingertips.

In the Package
After all the packing is ripped eagerly away, you're left with a nice, black, cheap-looking vinyl carry case, containing the drive case, a USB cable, a driver CD and a PS/2-passthrough power cable. No written instructions, but it's a no-brainer.

Out of the box.

The rubber endcaps slide off, the paper inserts can be thrown out, the protective film can be thrown in the direction of the bin as well, and the four clips (one in each corner) are popped inwards and the top comes off. Two screws at the connector end of the PCB have to be removed and then the whole board comes out.

The very simple board.

Hard Drive
I've got an old Toshiba 4.3gb 2.5" hard drive lying about, scrounged from a dead laptop, so in it goes. But if you're not as lucky (or as cursed) as moi to be living in what equates to a domestic computer organ bank, buying a new one isn't complete death to your wallet, a new laptop drive being about $200 or so for 10gb. Before your eyes bug out of your head, remember that notebook drives are usually made to be more resilient to knocks and bumps, so one could justify that the extra cash is worth it. Besides, they're small and, of course, there's much less demand for them than "normal" 3.5" HDD's. If this is still too pricey, you could always get a 3.5" hard drive case - NewMotion Tech make one too - which should work in the same way as this 2.5" review unit, although it'll be bigger, naturally.

The happy couple.

Anyway, the drive plugs into the connector that's attached to PCB by about an inch of ribbon cable that really doesn't like the idea of bending. Ever. After pushing and prodding and worrying that the cable was going to push the drive and snap off the power and USB connectors, the hard drive was sitting snugly between the connectors and the ribbon cable.

A tight fit.

Flip the whole thing over, insert the four retaining screws, flip over again, place the whole thing into the bottom case half, screw the two PCB screws in, snap on the top half, push on the rubber endcaps and you're ready to roll.

Reassembling.

Ready to go.

Operation
Just so you don't have to wait to long for my opinion of this drive, under Windows XP, this thing rocks. Plugging the USB cable in makes XP twitter for a while, as it installs a driver or two, and bang, you've suddenly got a new USB storage device and then you've then got a new logical hard drive sitting in My Computer, that is if you've got the drive set up already. If it's a new drive, create a partition, format it, and you can now start moving data.

If the drive is from an old laptop, like mine is, you'll be able to see all the old files, just sitting there nicely, waiting for you to format the drive in contempt of their former portable glory.

Now because I'm an impatient type, I just started copying data back and forth, and the rough data is this: 50mb worth of small files took roughly 2 minutes to move the drive, and 650mb worth of MP3's took roughly 18 minutes to move across the drive. That's around about 650kps. Not the best speed on the planet, but it's bearable. Keep in mind these are lots of small files going across, so Windows is starting a transfer, actually transferring the data and then closing the transfer, then starting on a new file. Larger files would take less time, because Windows would be doing nothing except pushing data for most of the time.

Windows 2000 didn't make a fuss either, which is hardly surprising considering that XP, from all reports, is a tighter, more refined version of 2K. The drive was detected, I moved about 3.5gb of data onto the drive, and copied it down to the XP machine. This took the drive about the same time it took me to watch The Usual Suspects and get some food, so no real surprises there. It was just a good excuse to move that data, which I had been meaning to for ages. I was going to dig out a 3.5" IDE drive and plug it in, which meant shutting it down, finding a drive, getting a screwdriver, etc.. so the USB drive wins points for helping me be even lazier. So what if it took 2 hours? It gave me time to watch Kevin Spacey walk around with a limp.

I also tried the drive on my Apple Macintosh at work, and the only difference was that a driver from the supplied CD was required, a quick install and reboot and I was able to access the drive as advertised. Interestingly, the Mac gave me the fastest performance so far: moving 108mb at roughly 900kps, which wasn't too shabby.

In case you're wondering why I haven't mentioned the PS/2 pass-through power cable, that's because I don't really have to. The case sucks all the power via the USB connection, although if the connection was via a non-powered USB port, I would suggest that the power needed to be connected to the PS/2 port then. It would be a bit of a pain in the bum to shut down the PC, pull out the mouse or keyboard connector, then plug it back in, then boot up again. It's probably easier to just unplug all your USB devices, allowing you to use a powered USB port until you're finished moving your data around.

Conclusion
I'm very happy with the NewMotion Tech 2.5" IDE USB enclosure. It does what I paid for it to do - it's not the fastest thing on the planet, but what do you expect for USB 1.0? USB 2.0 is starting to infiltrate motherboard and USB device manufacturers and is just as fast as Firewire, so we should be able to all lug about nice, speedy, portable drives with heaps of compatibility on practically every computer you come across.

Is your PC in the PC Database yet?

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