Incredibly fast and silent, too, but solid-state is still far too expensive for the mainstream.

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.

Monster storage; plus a choice of professional SAS or consumer SATA interfaces and reliability to boot.

750GB of storage. Backups may be problem.

Great performance, near-silent running and the FTP server make the Buffalo a great alternative to the Maxtor.

Not the fastest or quietest here, but it does offer some unique business benefits.

Plenty of features for such a small box. If you don’t already have a wireless router, this is a fantastic choice.

One of the cheapest 500GB drives here, but this is reflected in the lack of features and slow transfer speeds.

Superb performance, quiet running and excellent value for home use, especially if you want to stream media.

Easy to use, and with space for a second SATA disk, but it struggles with small files and is overpriced for the features.

Iomega insist on doing things its own way, but usually hits the mark.

This external drive has the kind of excesses and looks that made the 80s what they were.

A decent performer, but it struggles with small files

Why is this external hard drive different from all other external hard drives?

Seagate delivers a carnivorous drive, and does something to curb our fears of data loss.

Behemoth server and PC storage, with reliability features too.

At almost double the capacity of the other products in our roundup, this 400GB disk is big and fast, but unfortunately comes with an equally sized price tag.

Combing a 250GB 7,200RPM hard disk drive, 8-in-1 card reader and USB hub, there's not much this unit can't do. It can be operated in either an upright or lying down position, while the USB hub function allows you to plug in a removable USB device such as a memory key or digital camera directly without fiddling with USB extension cables or reaching behind your desktop or notebook.

This drive was the poorest performer in our roundup - but, as with its 200GB SATA cousin, the specifications were honest in pointing out the fact.

Western Digital markets this drive as a special edition drive for higher performance needs, but in our labs, not only has it been beaten by all other SATA drives, but its own IDE counterpart.