My kids have a nasty habit of stepping on things. Personally, I don't try to understand it; I just want to survive it, but so far I have not been lucky. The other day, my messenger bag was lying on the floor, when my son walked by and *crunch*, he manage to crush my external USB drive. If only I had the Freecom ToughDrive Sport USB hard drive. I could have avoided 120GB of data loss.

The ToughDrive Sport is a fully rugged and encrypted external drive that will keep your data and your sanity safe. According to the manufacturer, the ToughDrive Sport should survive a fall from over six feet, withstand 300G of force while the drive is spinning, and over 1000G of force when the drive is not operating. The drive is USB 2.0 and can transfer data at 480Mbps, or even faster with the supplied "turbo" driver for Windows Vista/XP. The Freecom ToughDrive doesn't just provide physical protection; the 256 bit encryption will keep your data secure from sneaky humans as well as the clumsy ones.

The ToughDrive Sport is available from Freecom in a 250GB model for $144, a 320GB model for $170, and a 500Gb version for $241. The drives do have a 30% (approximately) premium above their non-rugged brothers, but is your data security worth it? If your kids are like mine, it should be.

Via Electronista