Okay Mr. (or Mrs.) Fumblefingers, you've got your
Toughbook for high-impact computing on the go, but when you just need to take that presentation into the office and you don't want to lug your bombproof notebook with you it's time for a rugged external HDD, and Freecom's ToughDrive Sport is the latest. It's a rubberized enclosure sporting drives in 250, 320, and 500GB flavors, protecting them from drops of up to 2 meters while its 256 bit MD5 hardware encryption protects your data from would-be spies --
and from anyone on a Mac, since it's PC-only. The $219 drive (for 500GB) doesn't appear to be waterproof, or even resistant, but hey, check out that USB cable. It looks like a climbing rope!
Update: Thomas commented to point out that it's just the "Turbo" USB 2.0 driver that requires a PC. You can indeed throw this bad boy at your local Mac -- so long as you can live without boost.
[Via
Tom's Hardware]
posted March 19th 2009 7:06AM
Any bus powered drive with an integrated USB cable gets points in my book. Whether or not this is part of the majority that has power issues (not to be mistaken with copy issues, lol), I'd like to find out.
$219? I can belay that!
"there's 2 things you must know about the wise woman!"
1. Macs are PC's.
2. PC is not the name of an OS and in no case a replacement name for Windows.
PLEASE STOP IT !!!1!
Better not tell that to Apple. You could single handedly ruin their ad campaign, educating the masses on the supposed inferiority of PC.
"PC-only"? No. Given that the datasheet on the retailer's link gives minimum specs on what MAC you need, I'm pretty sure it works on a Mac. (I'm glad Tim's not protecting my data!)
So if you want a "boost" in speed on a mac, just connect it to firewire!
You just have to find the firewire cable on the drive ...
... and the matching firewire port on your mac ...
I want to know about the Waterman pen that is shown in comparison with the hard drive. Can anyone tell me about that?
Thanks
MD5 = Message Digest = 128 bit hash function, not encryption. If they're referring to how it stores a password, I'd be weary, as MD5 has long since been proven insecure for password hashing.
Live without boost??? That's like asking Paul Walker to live without a neon green paint job.
oh yeah I am in! :-)
If you read carefully, you will see that the data itself IS NOT ENCRYPTED on this disk! Just your password is encrypted in a special chip. If you enter the correct password, the chip allows access to the data on the disk. This provides a certain level of security, but you can still take apart the disk mechanism and read the data in a recovery facility. If you really want your data secure, you need to get a drive that encrypts the data!
The shock resistance and design of this drive is very nice. Just don't think it is a very secure drive.
It probably uses one of those new drives with built-in encryption which should mean data is encrypted; of course if they don't do that, then it would be silly device.
If you read their own technical data sheets, they never claim the data is encrypted, only that the password is encrypted on a chip. There was a drive maker about a year or so ago that was busted in the technical press for the same thing, only in that case I think they were claiming they used data encryption. At least these guys aren't claiming the data is encrypted!
So yes, it is a silly device if you care about data encryption. But most people don't use any encryption, so this might deter some less-technical crooks. It won't stop someone who really, really wants your data though.
If they truly want a "tough" drive they need to put an SSD in their; I don't think dropping a HDD while it's spinning will be any fun.
Of course with SSDs, the price gets pretty high.
it uses "256 bit MD5 hardware encryption" and they call this secure? MD5? Come on..