Strong performance and noticeably quieter than its predecessor. The Barracuda 7200.12 1TB is more than good enough for an OS drive, but also good bottomless storage for your movies and music

Apple Time Capsule owners can now access their files from afar thanks to a tie-in with Apple's Mobileme service.

Western Digital MyBook Home Edition

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.

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

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

Thin, but short on features and not particularly cheap either.

Fine performance and features make this a worthy winner.

The Seagate ST3160021A sits second last on the performance rankings, and in the specific Sysmark and Drivespeed scores. Though it might not appear valid to compare this 7200rpm 160GB drive to the 5400rpm Maxtor 300GB hulk, you can – they both only have 2MB caches.

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.