Technofile: As I spun round the corner on my fold-up bike, racing to catch the last train home - which the flipping digital numerals on my PDA had just told me was but 59 seconds away - my bike and I parted company.
The next thing I knew, I had fallen heavily onto my back, but I had been saved by the voluminous backpack I was carrying. Less fortunate was the fairly new Apple PowerBook laptop in said bag.
Closer inspection revealed a dent in one corner of the PowerBook.
Luckily Apple cases its laptops in aluminium these days.
If my laptop had been in a plastic case, I would have kissed goodbye to several hundred megabytes of data.
So apart from resolving never to go drinking with other journalists while in charge of a bike and a laptop, I realised I needed an emergency backup should my laptop ever fall foul of my socialising again.
I was loth to hit the local PC store and spend a small fortune on a piece of hardware that would look better inside NASA than in my house.
Step forward the Flip2disk from Amacom Technologies. This is a powerful pocket-sized and very portable hard drive.
Although it is portable, it packs a big punch. Typically, its 100 gigabyte (100GB) capacity will store the equivalent of 25,000 songs, or 200,000 photos, or more than 100 hours of video.
The Flip2disk, therefore, presents itself as quite a useful accompaniment to an MP3 player, digi-cam or DVD.
But in the main it is most useful as a back-up device. And though Amacom bills the Flip2disk as being small enough to fit in a shirt pocket, it is really a toiletries-bag-sized affair.
What will fit into a shirt pocket, however, is Amacom's sister product, the IOdisk, an ultra-slim portable hard drive that can carry around 80GB and is, like the Flip2disk, powered directly from a USB port. So there's no need to drag around a power adapter as well.
The Flip2disk has other fans. FHM called it the future of portable storage, while Linux magazine dropped it onto a tiled floor with no ill effects.
Even better, these devices are cross-platform, so both Mac and PC users can take advantage.
The Flip2disk and IOdisk are available, complete with USB2, for €355 and €285 respectively.
As these hard drives are portable, intrepid road warriors could back up their important files either at home or the office, or even in the hotel room before taking their laptop out for a spin on a fold-up bike or similar.
See www.amacom-tech.com
