Once upon a time, most people's treasured memories were stored in a couple of cardboard boxes. Now ioSafe's storage box promises to protect them at furnace temperatures up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

With unusual styling that looks like it came straight from a 1970s sci-fi series, Maxtor’s OneTouch Plus is a distinctive but not unattractive product.

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

A useful little NAS box with plenty of features and a compelling price.

Several manufacturers this month have sought to distinguish their products through design. None, however, has gone so far as Seagate to challenge our expectations of an external hard disk.

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

Packed with features, and with great performance, the only disadvantages are the price and the short warranty.

It's expensive, but the YES Box successfully marries high-end and consumer features in a flexible and scalable device.

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

Offering 40GB of storage, the Iomega drive is very small for its capacity, measuring a mere 8.89 x 7.37 x 1.27cm. It weighs just over 99 grams, which means it's unnoticeable in your pocket. The internal drive is a 40GB Hitachi TravelStar C4K40 -- a new form-factor hard drive, measuring a mere 1.8 inches across (a normal notebook hard drive is 2.5in, a desktop drive 3.5) -- and only about 7mm thick.

One of the practical devices for large back up jobs are external hard drive drives, which not only offer competitive capacities, but are easily portable and perfect for offsite storage. Maxtor's OneTouch II is pitched squarely at this type of application and, as the name suggests, makes it easier with a single button for back up.

At first glance, the Seagate Pocket Hard Drive appears very similar to a yo-yo in both size and mechanics. No, you won't be able to perform tricks with it, but … the attached USB cable does wrap around the device in a stringy sort of way.

MSI's MegaCache is not the fastest performer on test but is a standout product in this roundup for many reasons, but one in particular above all: it's got a whopping -- absolutely whopping -- 1.5GB storage capacity for a portable USB disk.

The Cruzer Titanium from SanDisk is the second most expensive USB key we tested, and is beaten only by the MSI MegaCache.

Removable Storage