Verbatim has kindly sent me one of its new pocket hard drives for evaluation. The Hi-Speed Store 'n' Go USB 2.0 HD is a tiny device that stores up to 12GB of data on a 1in hard drive, and also includes a portable environment that enables entire applications to be stored and run by connecting the drive up to any Windows PC. The drive costs £100.

The photo of the Store 'n' Go drive perhaps doesn't give a sense of scale. The thing really is tiny – it looks like it would fit comfortably inside a matchbox. Its hinged USB connector is stowed neatly in a recess in the top of the drive when not in use, and folds out when you want to plug it into a PC.

I tested out the drive by copying some multi-gigabyte VMware virtual PC images from one Windows XP computer to another, and its performance seemed ample for this task.

However, Verbatim also includes with the Store 'n' Go a piece of software called Ceedo, from a firm called Ceedo Technologies. This can be launched when you plug the drive into a computer's USB port, and it displays a kind of replica of the Windows Start menu, complete with links to any applications that are stored on the drive.

Ceedo's web page provides a selection of applications, such as photo editors, security tools, office applications, archiving tools, and others, all of which can be downloaded freely to the Verbatim drive. The applications can be run from here, but leave no trace behind when you have finished and remove the Store 'n' Go drive.

I selected a few, such as the AbiWord word processor and FastStone Image Viewer, and watched as they installed. The Ceedo software seems to intercept the standard Windows installation routine, and ensures that the application is diverted to a Program Files folder on the Store 'n' Go drive instead of the computer's hard drive.

Ceedo also has available separate a tool called Argo Application Installer, which can apparently install any Windows application to the Store 'n' Go. This costs $29.95 (£15.40) to download.

15 Mar 2007