The Iomega eGo BlackBelt 250GB 5,400rpm mini-USB connected portable hard drive, launched this week, should appeal to mobile professionals on the move.

Shaped like a hip flask, the BlackBelt has two highly polished end fascias, and an X-shaped rubber girdle called a Power Grip reinforced with rubber at the corners.

Iomega claims that the drive and its data will survive a drop of up to 2.1m (7ft) owing to a feature called Drop Guard Xtreme. However, users may question the fact that the mini-USB port and DC connection are not protected by the casing.

Under the black-on-black chassis is a Seagate ST925082 7AS USB hard drive which, when encased in Iomega livery, gives the device a weight of 260g.

The BlackBelt can be powered using the dual-headed USB 2.0 cable provided, although there is a 5V DC connection next to the mini-USB port if an AC adapter is used, which is an optional extra and wasn't included with our review sample. There is also a paperclip-accessible reset button next to the mini-USB port.

Launched at the same time was an enterprise 320GB device called eGo Encrypt, which has a similar form factor but uses the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard. If the USB cable is disconnected, the drive locks until the owner supplies the requisite data access password.

We plugged the BlackBelt into our test system and used SiSoftware's System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant (Sandra) 2009 software to benchmark the drive. This gave disk read speeds averaging 32MB/s all along the disk locations, with an access time of 15ms. SimpliSoft's HD Tach benchmark gave a similar access time and a disk read speed of 35MB/s.

A real-world write test in copying half a gigabyte of data across a USB 2.0 connection gave 8.8MB/s. Our test mix of data did contain a large number of files, some of them under 1KB in size. Larger files will give better data write rates, and a test mix with files over 2GB in size gave a 25MB/s write rate.

For backup, users can get a licensed copy of Iomega parent company EMC's Retrospect (PDF) software, or sign up to MozyHome's online backup service for peace of mind.

Operating system support includes Mac OS X 10.1 or higher, and Windows 2000, XP and Vista. The eGo Encrypt drive is Windows only.

One other consideration is that its resemblance to a hip flask could actually increase the chances of its getting stolen.