♬ Because it keeps on working …♬

Lyrics and Music by Peter Kingsbery, recorded by Cock Robin.

ioSafe Portable Hard Drive

I have been a big fan of the ioSafe line of disaster proof external hard drives for some time now (back in October I wrote about the ioSafe Solo Pro hardened hard drive). I use a 1.5 terabyte SoloPro to back up my MacBook (using TimeMachine) regularly. I even replaced the internal hard drive using the SoloPro/TimeMachine back up and the data transferred perfectly to the bigger internal MacBook hard drive and I was up and running in no time. Voila!

But now ioSafe have come up with a hardened portable hard drive! Does it get any better than this? Look at the specs:

• Crush protection up to 5,000 lbs.
• Drop protection up to 20′
• Immersion protection up to 30′ for 3 days
• Chemical protection
• Altitude protection
• Extreme environment protection
• USB 3.0 and USB 2.0
• Data Recovery Service up to $5,000
• Great warranty
• Works with Macs and PCs
• Titanium or aluminum metal jacket (choose your version!)
• Comes in SSD and HDD versions
• Designed to military specifications
• Comes with Genie Timeline Pro backup software
• Comes with TrueCrypt open-source encryption software (in case you want to encrypt the data on that hard drive)
• Quiet!!!

Cnet has given it a Best of CES 2011 Winner award!  There is an amazing video on the web where this hard drive is shot at with a shotgun and it still works just fine.

I plugged the ioSafe portable HD into a MacBook and it worked flawlessly.  The Mac detected the drive, reconfigured it for the Mac filing system and then we were off and running with a backup.  Smooth, fast and easy.

The regular price of the ioSafe portable depends on the size and configuration of the unit.  The regular price for a 500 GB, aluminum version is $299.00 (USD).  But for a limited time,  if you go to Livingtechie.com you can get this same unit for $179.00 (including free ground shipping) (they send you a code for the discount at ioSafe.com).  The only bad part about this?  It is for US Residents only!!!!!

(full disclosure – ioSafe sent me a reviewers copy of the rugged portable hard drive.  But I would have bought one anyway because it keeps on working!)