Freecom ToughDrive, White Sentinel

The Freecom ToughDrive is another addition to the variety of mobile hard drives available today; it stands out for its anti-shock frame, integrated FireWire cable, as well as mini USB connectivity in a sophisticated and elegant white shock-resistant casing. Unfortunately, the casing is quite bulky compared to a standard 2.5-inch hard drive casing, and thus not really something that you can easily carry in the pocket. The integrated firewire cable has a blue indicator LED that indicates transfer of data. Using the Everest Disk benchmark, the drive gave us a constant read speed of 12 MB/s whereas during actual data transfer it gave just 10 MB/s. Compared to a normal 2.5-inch SATA 5400 rpm hard drive with an external USB 2.0 casing, the read speed and the actual data transfer speed is nothing spectacular. We dropped the drive from a height of around 1 meter, and the drive did work perfectly even after that, living up to its name. However at its price, it is a bit expensive considering the fact that you can get a Maxtor or Western Digital 160 GB mobile hard drive for about 4.5k. Buy it if your luggage takes severe knocks regularly.