A tad pricey but a well-built desktop DAS appliance with plenty of fault-tolerant storage and top performance

It may lack eSATA, but this is a fast and cheap terabyte drive.

The LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra is less than the size of a Harry Potter book, yet crams in two 500GB 2.5in hard disks.

Smart and easy to use, and can be positioned vertically or horizontally

An external drive that despite being a decent performer is making Walter Gropius roll in his grave as we speak.

This aluminium storage box is a prime candidate for a living-room media network, especially if you need 1TB of storage space.

Clean lines undermined by poor performance and a high price.

Identified during installation by the operating system as a Pioneer DVR-A06P, this unit was later confirmed to be an OEM version of the same drive. Both feature a circular air vent on the rear of the chassis, designed to allow for optimum airflow while in operation.

Two external hard drives in lego-esque cases. One of them is worthy of our recommended stamp.

Superior real-world transfer performance makes it a winner this month.

Inexpensive, but a frugal assortment of features

Quick, cheap and light: the best 3.5in drive in the group.

A comprehensive set of features and good performance

With more homes served by their own wired and wireless networks, there’s no better way to store all your music, movies and documents than a NAS box like this

A solid, assured drive with plenty of interfaces and enough style to justify the price.

HP crashes the 30" party with the most versatile display on the market.

Light on features, but it’s tiny and ferociously quick.