Mountain Solutions ABSplus review

Digital Photography Now Peripheral Reviews

Mountain Solutions ABSplus

19th March - 2002
By Ian Burley

Portable external hard drive and back up device

The ABS unit plugs directly into a PCMCIA slot
on the side of your notebook PC

Not strictly speaking a digital photography peripheral, the Mountain Solutions ABSplus will still be of interest if you use your laptop to store your images. ABS stands for Automatic Backup System, a hard drive back up software solution bundled with a selection of external back up hard drives, including the ABSplus.

The ABS plus is a plastic cased one third height 2.5 inch hard drive that connects to a laptop PC via a PCMCIA slot. We looked at a 6GB model and options range up to 48GB. Instead of yet another cable to get tangled or lost, the ABSplus unit has an integrated PCMCIA connector. It’s a ruggedised flat ribbon cable with a PCMCIA Type I fit connector. It folds flush when not in use.

This is the underneath of the unit, where the PCMCIA
card connector and flexible integrated lead stows
when not in use (see below).

Weight is saved as all the power comes from the PCMCIA interface and, therefore, your laptop’s own power supply. This is both good and bad; it’s good for simplicity and convenience, but as the drive could take several hours to backup or restore your notebook’s drive contents, we wouldn’t advise using the ABS plus without connecting your laptop to its mains power supply.

Average data transfer rate was measured at about 33MB per minute, so 10GB of data could take as much as 5 hours to be backed up, initially. The software is simple and easy to use, though.

As much smaller Type III and even Type II ultra-slim PCMCIA hard drives are now available, what advantage does a relatively large external 2.5 inch drive, like the ABSplus have? The obvious answer is cost; 2.5 inch drive prices have fallen rapidly in the last year and the cost per megabyte, plus maximum capacity, is much better than PCMCIA hard drives.

In emergencies, the ABSplus drive mechanism itself can be used as a physical donor replacement for a failed notebook drive. This is because the ABSplus software has an option to make a direct facsimile of the partitioning and contents of the host drive. It’s not really a DIY job unless you are experienced in this area.

Files can also be backed up selectively. If your ABSplus unit has a smaller capacity than your notebook’s host HD, you could choose to back up just the OS and applications and a sub-set of your documents. As the ABSplus drive can be addressed as an additional drive letter, you can use other backup programs or applications with the drive as required.

The Mountain Solutions ABSplus is an interesting portable hard drive backup solution. It can act both sa smart backup device and a slow general external drive. It appears rugged and well designed, plus it’s lightweight.