I found a super-affordable portable disk that gives me 100GB to store whatever I need, like bunches of security tools and even an alternative OS. Plus I can carry it around in my pocket.
EDGE Tech Corporation makes the DiskGO! ultra-portable line of hard drives, which are reasonably priced and incredibly useful. . These hotrod units are USB-based, lightweight, and not much larger than a regular slimline laptop hard disk, measuring only 5.04" x 3.07" x .59". They only weigh about 4 ounces.
The 100GB model costs about $160 depending on where you buy it - direct from EGDE seems to be the best route to take. You can also get a 120GB model for $180 and a 160GB model for about $320, or models that have less storage capacity starting at about $70 for 20GB.
Here's the side view - notice that it's not much thicker or longer than a typical pen:
Now here's the really cool part: You can easily open these units by removing a few little screws and then you can quickly remove the hard disk and pop in any other slimline disk you prefer. In essence the unit lets you use it as a IDE to USB adaptor.
If you look at the picture of the internals you see the disk controller at the top. It'll accept just about any drive that has a mini-IDE connector, like those found on most laptop disk drives.
So for example, I temporarily swapped the 100GB drive out for an old 20GB drive where I had a bunch of stuff stored that I wanted to access easily. With the drive swapped I then plugged the DiskGO! unit in the USB port of my desktop computer and presto, instant access to all my archived files. Swapping the 100GB drive back into the DiskGO! chassis took me every bit of about 10 seconds, not counting replacing the screws.
If you're looking for highly portable storage media with capacity that exceeds the typical USB thumb drives available today, and that can hold most, if not all, of your security tools at a price that won't damage your budget then this might be just what you need. It sure works for me!