INDYLAB Touch USB 2.0 500GB Touch Sensitive Portable HDD

Introduction

It isn't everyday that something completely new comes across our desks these days. Sure, really cool things like the OCZ RevoDrive come in every week, but they are rarely the first in their category. When INDYLAB announced their latest product called Touch, we knew it was something new and exciting and we wanted to give it a run through our labs.

As the name implies, the INDYLAB Touch is a touch sensitive USB 2.0 portable hard drive. To our knowledge, this is the world's first touch enabled portable storage device. You might be wondering what functions could possibly be controlled on a portable storage device other than power. What makes the Touch cool is that the button is hidden. Without knowing where to touch the drive to turn it on, you will not be able to use the drive. Think of it as security without needing to remember a password or encryption key.

Let's take a look at the INDYLAB Touch and see what it has to offer.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

INDYLAB is a Korean company that makes several different models of portable storage products and even has their own line of solid state products. The Touch, one of INDYLAB's newest products, is currently not sold in the US or Europe as far as I can tell. For now, it is an APAC region only product.

Going over the specifications we can see that the only method for connectivity is a single USB 2.0 port. With USB 3.0 starting to gain market share, the cost of USB 2.0 products has been steadily declining. We were able to find the INDYLAB Touch 500GB, just like the one we are reviewing today, for 111,900(KRW) or just a little under 100 USD.

Our sample drive is the 500GB model that uses a Samsung 2.5" hard drive. After formatting we are left with 465GB of free space. Unlike most external drives that turn on as soon as power is sent to the drive, the Touch must be touched in a special location before it starts to spin the drive up.