A sturdy construction and stylish design make the Passport a good travel companion.

It costs a pretty penny, but proves to be the perfect solution for users looking to expand their laptop’s storage capacity or take their work home with them, without having to worry about burning CDs.

Though it's slim on security features and none too quick, this portable drive can connect to your network or directly to your PC.

The LaCie Rugged All-Terrain Hard Drive isn’t built to withstand a nuclear holocaust, but it provides better protection than standard portable hard drives. We were impressed with the read/write times and the fact that it can provide 500GB of hard drive space powered by USB.

The LaCie Hard Disk Design by Neil Poulton (1TB) is an enticing piece of hardware; whether you know who Neil Poulton is or not. Artfully sculptured and bursting with memory, it will satisfy every type of user, from PC plebs to computer connoisseurs.

The Iomega Screenplay Pro shares many of the limitations of its predecessor, but the extra storage space, addition of Firewire and digital audio output are all significant improvements

A competitive back up solution from Maxtor, that has something for everyone.

Sometimes you just can't protect valuable files enough. Whether you use the primary drive of the Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition (and rely on RAID 1 to make a second copy on the hidden secondary drive) or use the included backup software to make an additional copy of files on your system's built-in hard drive (using RAID 0) or two copies (with RAID 1 enabled), the quiet, fast and easy-to-set-up Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition gives you the best and simplest data protection in a user-friendly drive we've seen.

Its cost per gigabyte of $1.26 is competitive for a large external drive, so if you need that many gigs, the My Book is worth considering.