Dress it up however you like but let's face it -- disk storage just ain’t sexy, but this miniscule and lightweight portable hard drive is going to do a damn fine job of seducing you. If you own a laptop and look forward to downloading MP3s at work to take back to your pad then this could be well up your street. At only 120x75x13mm, the SlimStor portable hard drive is slim but not emaciated and slips snugly into a jacket pocket without an unsightly bulge. The metallic matt silver box, which looks rather like a cigarillo case, is smooth and sleek with one MiniCentronics socket situated next to the power socket at the rear. It weighs only 180g, so even with leads included you’ll hardly notice the extra burden when on the move. And, thanks to the versatility of the SlimStor it can connect through a PC Card, FireWire or USB interface. During our tests the drive worked fine when powered through either PC Card or USB connection and draws power either from the mains or via the PS/2 port if required. We got hold of a 6Gb SlimStor, but capacities up to 14Gb are available. Primary Storage claim maximum transfer rates of 2MB/sec for PC Card file transfer, 1MB/sec for USB and a speedy 10MB/sec for FireWire. We came close to these figures in our evaluation when transferring smaller files. It doesn’t make a lot of noise either -- without the flashing red LED you might even forget it was there. The bundled copy of AutoSave 1.05 is a backup utility that claims to automatically protect against accidental file deletion, virus attack or hard drive failure. You certainly wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with the SlimStor at work or round your mates house, and it is little enough to be genuinely portable. If you’re into MP3, then you’ll already know that 6Gb is enough room for about 80 albums. Pricing for the 6Gb model is as follows: PC Card -- £286+Vat, USB PC/Mac £299+Vat, Firewire £326+Vat. To get your hands on 'em, fax 01952 670063 or phone 01952 602600

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