Freecom Mobile Drive XXS: Coolest storage gadget ever?

Our friendly neighbourhood Freecom reps popped round yesterday to show off its latest hotness. This, friends, is the Mobile Drive XXS -- claimed to be the smallest and lightest 2.5-inch USB drive on the market.

If you ask us, it's also the coolest. Freecom has basically taken a Samsung 2.5-inch laptop hard drive, swapped the SATA connector for a mini USB connector, and placed it inside an injection-moulded rubber sleeve. It's simple, effective and rather beautiful. To us geeks, anyway.

The Mobile Drive XXS is available in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB capacities, for £45, £60 and £80 respectively. For reference, a 64GB USB flash drive will cost you in the region of £150, so you can see just how much sense this makes.

Want a closer look at one? Have a look at the pictures over the following few pages, then hop over to Freecom's Web site to cop one. -Rory Reid

The drive itself -- on the 160GB model -- is a 2.5-inch HM160HX with a 5,400rpm spin speed and 8MB of cache. Isn't it cute?

Here it is all wrapped up inside its soft, protective rubber case. There's no Freecom branding anywhere, and we think that's a good thing. We've nothing against Freecom, but the plain black look is just so hot right now. The whole thing measures 110mm by 80mm by 13.5mm and weighs 145g. Freecom plans to release different coloured cases at some point in the future.

Here's a close-up of the connector. Samsung has converted it from a standard SATA hook-up to a mini USB connector.