Frankfurt (Germany) - Given the fact that the market for mobile hard drives grew by 90% in Europe, and US sales is doubling on a year-to-year basis, it seems that market for external hard drives is the place to be.

Verbatim's engineers saw that in order to capture the market, you have to use something other than a plastic box - and PHD was born. Nope, it does not stand for Physics Degree, but rather Portable Hard Disk.

PHD drives are available in packages of 120, 160, 250 and 320 GB, all achieved by using 2.5" hard drives (with 320 GB being offered; can you say Western Digital?). Hard drives all run at 5400rpm, and you can connect them to your PC or Mac using USB 2.0 or FireWire connections, with some smaller differences between the two (480-400 Mbps). A press release called for 400 and 480 MB/s, and with some confusion stated the term "Megabyte". However, there is a slight (8x) difference between MB/s and Mbps.

These sleek drives will be available by the end of February