What weighs 3.9 ounces; is less than 3 x 3.5 inches in width and depth and less than one-half inch high? Right you are. It's the Iomega 60 GB Silver external hard disk drive. The drive is part of the company's Silver Series which offers compact units ranging in size from 60 to 160 GB. It's USB 2.0 compatible and can run off the power from provided by a USB port. You really won't believe how light and small this thing is until you pick one up.

Our evaluation unit came with a 60 GB Hitachi HTC42606 drive (4200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100). The disk installed easily and performed well, if not spectacularly fast and made it easy to backup files on our collection of notebooks. We were even able to do a full disk backup of the C: drive on one of the notebooks using Windows XP's NTBackup program.

Running off of USB port power is fine as long as the port provides enough and consistent power. Where that's not the case, an optional AC power supply is available. When using the drive for large backups or for restoring data, it's best to use the power supply.

The drive's case is metal on the top, bottom and sides. The top has a light to show the drive is powered up and the Iomega logo. The front is a black plastic plate. The back is the business end of the drive. There is a switch to select USB or external (AC power supply) power, a socket to plug the power supply into and a USB connector.

This is a great present for someone who travels with a notebook computer. It also comes in handy for those who move from computer-to-computer on a regular basis. Sixty GB is a lot of room for data files that must be available wherever a person goes.