External Hard Drives

With hard drives, size matters, and these three can hold all the junk in your trunk.

OWC Elite-AL Pro mini

Keep your red, typo-correcting pen holstered; that price and size were accurate as we went to press. At that cost, you’ll naturally get every major disk interface possible: FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0, and eSATA. And the paperback-sized enclosure and swank aluminum style look great, but what else is there? Speed and reliability. This solid-state drive blazes through any kind of data, plus it has no moving parts to damage. The combination makes this perfect for ferrying Final Cut Pro edits, photos, and other huge files.

Other World Computing · $849 for 200GB SSD · macsales.com

Data Robotics Drobo S

Any disk drive can add storage, but the Drobo S adds redundancy and flexibility. Normally with redundant disks--think RAID--you have to add pairs of like-sized drives at the same time. But with the Drobo S, you can install any size SATA drive at any time, mixing and matching to create a storage box that makes automatic duplicates and backups. (Some configurations already include storage.) Its FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and eSATA connections give you speedy access to huge files.

Data Robotics · $799 without storage · drobo.com

Western Digital My Book for Mac

Hard drives are cheap, but your data is priceless. The MyBook for Mac makes a great Time Machine backup disk, or you can just use it for additional storage. It’s a sleek, sturdy drive that connects via the USB 2.0 found on nearly any Mac. And an optional hardware-based security tool protects your data from theft. Just enter your password when you plug it in, and the drive will unlock its 256-bit encryption. It can even install the decryption utility first if you connect it to a new computer.

Western Digital · $139.99 for 1TB · wdc.com