Review: Amacom Ezsecure hard disk

The idea behind this small portable hard disk is security.

Not theft per se, or fire: this one is designed to protect against the theft of your data. Using the disk, your documents and files are secured using encryption so that they can't be accessed unless you enter a Pin.

A touch-sensitive screen runs along the top of the case. When the disk is plugged in the user is prompted to set a Pin to access data. Next time, without the Pin, the data is locked down and can't be seen.

It's available in several versions but one we looked at came with a 160GB disk fitted. Once we had confirmed the Pin the device quickly introduced itself to Windows, which recognised it as a standard external hard disk.

Transfer speeds were slightly slower than we'd normally but not by much – it took around 80 seconds to copy 1GB of our mixed test data, as compared with around 60 seconds from a decent standard hard disk.

It was perfectly happy to work with a Mac too. The only problem is the price – it's over double what you'd normally pay for a disk of that capacity, but if you want secure data, this is a very easy way to get it.