The portable storage market has grown tremendously over the past few months. That's good news for those who need to carry around a lot of data but don't like lugging a notebook computer to do it.
The portable storage trend got underway last year with the proliferation of USB flash memory devices -- small, cigarette-lighter sized nonvolatile memory sticks that allowed you to store as much as a gigabyte or two of data and transfer it easily to any computer that had a USB port.
But those devices, dubbed memory sticks or USB keys, were more commonly found in the 256 MB or 512 MB capacities -- better than a floppy drive, without a doubt, but still insufficient for many people. After all, a CD's worth of MP3 files recorded at decent quality today requires more than 256 MB. The larger-capacity, 1 GB memory sticks were too expensive to make them worth the cost. So the search continued.
Recently, technology manufacturers have trotted onto the market a host of tiny storage devices that sport miniature hard drives with multiple-gigabyte capacities. These tiny data guzzlers generally cost less than USB sticks and still, in many cases, fit in the palm of your hand or slip nicely into a shirt pocket.
The hard disk maker Seagate (www.seagate.com) wants to push mass storage into the pockets of the many with its Pocket Hard Drive series of palm-sized, oval storage units. Pocket Hard Drives, now available widely at the retail level, come in sizes of 2.5 and 5 GB, offering significantly more storage than the largest USB stick and costing about half as much, at around US$160 for the 2.5 GB version.
There's little doubt that Seagate is targeting the dissatisfied users of USB sticks. The Pocket Hard Drives boast durability, housed as they are in a round shell that absorbs shock -- the primary culprit in portable hard drive failures.
Portability does not take a backseat to convenience with the latest-generation of portable storage units. The Pocket Hard Drive does away with power cords altogether, getting its power directly from the USB port into which it plugs. There's not even a USB cable to worry about: it's attached to the unit, retractable when not in use.
Also, the Audavi Corporation (www.hardtape.com) has a somewhat novel approach to getting an even larger amount of data in your pocket with its HardTape series of PDA-sized devices. The HardTape may not have the most appealing name to those who remember the teeth-grinding slowness of tape backup systems, but the "tape" part of the product's name is an attempt to communicate the product's ruggedness, not its storage medium. The HardTape is actually a miniature hard drive housed to withstand a major impact.
In the HardTape's case, the blow can be a fall to concrete from 2 feet up. That's still not as rugged as some flash memory-based devices, but those don't offer the capacities that the HardTape does -- up to 80 GB, enough to back up most people's entire computer.
The HardTape comes with its own built-in software for backing up and encrypting data. It weighs a mere 8 ounces, is compatible with both Macintosh and Windows-based systems, and can connect to a computer using a FireWire, USB, or a PCMCIA connection. Currently, HardTapes are fairly difficult to find, but you can order directly from Audavi's Yahoo-based store (www.store.yahoo.com/hardtape).
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