The EZ Bus Mini is a slick little drive that sacrifices fancy-pants styling for cold, hard functionality.
Its outer shell is made of hard rubber in order to keep the 40GB Hitachi Travelstar drive within safe from harm, and the USB 2.0 cable tucks into a recessed channel on the back of the drive, so it’s out of sight and not flopping about during transport. The USB cable is very short, so it’s a good thing Apricorn includes a 12-inch extension cable.
The Travelstar inside the rubberized enclosure is a wee 1.8-inch hard drive. This particular model has two platters that hold a total of 40GB of data, but 20GB and 60GB versions are also available. All are bus-powered, meaning they suck juice from the USB teat and therefore don’t require an external power brick. These little 1.8-inch drives aren’t the fastest drives around, but they’re fast enough for this drive’s purposes—backing up files and copying data from your home PC to your work rig.
The real bonus with this drive is the sublime software bundle, which includes a backup utility, drive-imaging software, and an encryption tool. Unfortunately, the encryption software can only encrypt 20MB—you have to upgrade to the Pro version to protect more data. The drive-imaging utility is also of little value for those with high-capacity hard drives because the EZ Bus Mini only holds 40GB of data.
Though it’s a bit pricey, the EZ Bus Mini does everything a portable drive needs to do, and does it well.
Month Reviewed: February 2006
Verdict: 8
URL: www.apricorn.com
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