Hard disks have never been cheaper and, at the moment, a whopping 80GB model will set you back a mere £90. You do, of course, need the wherewithal to fit it inside your PC, and this means negotiating IDE channels, jumper settings, minuscule screws that ping into your computer innards with minimal effort and - well, you get the picture. If you cannot face or simply cannot be bothered with all this fuss, you should get yourself an external hard drive. By strange coincidence, that is what Iomega has just launched.
At £189, the HDD 20GB is rather more expensive than an internal drive, but it is up and running in seconds. It is a slim little number finished in grey and black, much like Iomega's existing Peerless drive. Like the Peerless, the HDD comes in two parts, and the drive clips to a small module that provides the necessary sockets. At less than the size of a paperback book, the HDD takes up little desk space but, unlike the slim Zip 250, there is no option to stand it on its side.
The HDD uses a USB 2 connection, but obviously it will also work, albeit more slowly, via traditional USB. A FireWire model will also be available at some point. Since a USB 2 port does not carry enough voltage to power a hard drive, the HDD 20GB also needs a separate power supply.
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