The Apricorn EZ Bus Mini 40GB
When the box for the Apricorn EZ Bus Mini came in, we figured we had a cheap knock-off product on our hands. The box looked, well, uninspired. And when we opened it up, we found that the drive had simply been shrink-wrapped to a piece of cardboard and stuck into the box, as you can see in Figure D.

FIGURE D


This did not look promising. Roll over picture for a larger image.

This did not look promising. Hard drives should be packed well, surrounded by loads of foam and with space to absorb the shock of shipping. Strapping a drive to a piece of cardboard and throwing it into the box seemed like a bad idea.

What we didn't know, until we took the drive out of the packaging, was just how cool a product this thing is. First, it turns out the drive was packed in foam. It comes with a little foam case (like a PDA case, but with a foam liner). It was packed in that case, under the shrinkwrap. That was a relief.

It's the drive itself, though, that's such a winner. First, it's small and light, weighing in at only 4 ounces. The other two drives we've looked at so far were 11 and 8.5 ounces, respectively (plus they needed power bricks and cables).

Second, as you can see in Figure E, the drive's cable is tucked right into the base of the drive.

FIGURE E


The top of the drive is shown on the left, the base of the drive is shown on the right. Roll over picture for a larger image.

This tucked-in cable feature makes the drive nearly as portable as a thumb drive, but with a full 40GB drive. And because the EZ Bus Mini uses an ultra-portable 1.8" mini Hitachi drive, it doesn't need external power at all. Thumb drives are nice, but they're often not big enough to carry a full project on them. I, for example, do a lot of programming. None of my thumb drives can fit my entire development environment and source code. But this drive can. As a result, it's very easy for me to move my development system to a test box (or to my laptop), without taking the time for a network transfer.

At $199 for the 40GB model, the EZ Bus Mini isn't cheap. Without a doubt, though, this is the one larger capacity drive you'll want in your toolbox. We give the EZ Bus Mini a not-so-mini perfect 5 out of 5 score.

OUR RATING: 5 of 5

FIGURE F


The TOPY Mini Writer uses DataPlay disks. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Unlike the drives we've discussed so far, this is not, technically, a hard drive. Instead, the TOPY uses strange little DataPlay disks, reminiscent of teeny floppy disks. Now, if you were reading the trade press way back in 2001, you probably knew about DataPlay. Back then, the idea of little tiny 500MB disks seemed astounding.

But the disk format never got off the ground. DataPlay spent so much launching the product that they went bankrupt before anything reached the market. Then, in 2003, the intellectual property that made up the DataPlay technology was bought out by DHPI. And, eventually, we got to see the DataPlay format in a few products, like the TOPY Mini Writer we're reviewing here.