Amacom ezSecure 160GB review

Amacom’s ezSecure is a portable USB hard disk with a difference.

You can protect its contents with a customisable PIN of up to 12 digits, which you enter on a small touch-screen keypad. This is a convenient way to protect your data from prying eyes and casual thieves, especially as you don’t have to install any software on your PC. It can lock itself automatically when you unplug it from your PC, but there’s no option to do this after a set period of inactivity.

The ezSecure’s performance when transferring files was in line with what we’d expect from a portable USB external hard drive. Amacom has bundled its own Back2Normal backup software, although this was disappointingly sluggish and crashed frequently on our Vista laptop.

At 73p per gigabyte, the ezSecure is very expensive. It’s worth buying only if you need a hassle-free way to secure sensitive files. You could use free encryption software, such as www.truecrypt.org, but the ezSecure is far easier. Freecom’s 500GB Mobile Drive Classic costs just £87 including VAT from www.scan.co.uk and has three times the capacity, though, making it a far better choice for most users.