Freecom Tough Drive Pro USB-FW400 250 GB

According to Freecom, these so-called 'Tough Drives' are the ideal solution for any frequent traveler.

On the inside, the drive is mounted in a shock-resistant cradle, while the outside is covered in a protective layer of soft silicon.

All of this engineering is designed to keep your data safe even if the drive takes a nasty tumble.

To see if it worked, we dropped it from a height of one meter (one yard) to see if they survived, and this particular model performed impressively.

There wasn't a single scratch on the outside of the disk, but obviously we don't advise you try this at home in case you're unlucky enough to do yours some real damage.

In terms of connectivity, there are two ports on the side of the Tough Drive: one US and one Firewire 400.

The FireWire 400 cable is on a small unfolding arm that's very handy for laptops, but less useful on a desktop computer where it's too short.

Over USB, Freecom just about manages to catch up with the LaCie Little Disk 250 GB--for the time being, one of the fastest 2.5'' hard drives in our survey.

When it comes to Firewire, though, LaCie maintains a clear advantage, reaching 1 MB/s for reading and 3 MB/s for writing data.