External hard drives come in a variety of shapes and sizes. We chose some of the best that buck the trend of an ugly plastic box and give you something a little more stylish to store on your desk.
• NewerTech miniStack If you love your Mac Mini and want a stackable solution, this is a great option. (Note you can "bring your own hard drive" and just buy the enclosure.)
• Western Digital My Book Can get one as big as 1 TB (Terra Byte!), and could sit nicely with on a shelf with some books.
• SimpleTech SimpleDrive, Pininfarina Edition Bright, small, and portable.
• Seagate FreeAgent A variety of options to choose from depending on your usage.
• LaCie Brick Bright and stackable, an easy way to add some color to your desk.
• LaCie Porsche Sleek and silver.
Well, that's not quite ten but we'll leave you to fill in the gaps. Do you have an external drive that you love? Let us know in the comments.
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Comments (11)
Sadly, I can't seem to find the G5-esque Rosewill RX30 series enclosures anymore or they might qualify.
Love Western Digital's My Book drives. Beautiful cases, very functional and great performance. Inexpensive, too.
I really like the two LaCie hard drives detailed here:
http://www.lacie.com/company/news/news.htm?id=10275
I have the "Rugged" which I love for it's large storage capacity and the fact that I have dropped it several times and the bumpers seem to have protected it. But I love, love, love the looks of the "Skwarim" hard drive.
I have the 500GB LaCie Brick to do my bi-weekly back-ups. Easy to use and store when not in use. (I also have a small LaCie 80GB USB-powered "plug-and-play" portable hard drive connected to my laptop to store all of my music files, but will probably upgrade to the 160GB version because of all the downloads from my eMusic subscription and all the free music I get!). Highly recommend both!
Whoops! I have the 500GB LaCie Porsche (not the Lego-looking Brick).
Warning! Warning!
Porsche designed LaCie drives are known to fail. It's documented that many fail within the first year of ownership. Other LaCies seem to be OK. The LaCie "Big Disk" series is not cute, but it is robust and has a much better track record.
Totally agree with the LaCie comment about them failing. When I was researching my external drive, I was drawn to LaCie's sleek lines. However, after some reading, I was quickly turned away by the horrible reviews I was reading.
I got a MyBook 250 and could not be happier- its a fantastic drive, and looks good to boot.
I third the warning about LaCie. They're not the best drives around. Failure rate for those drives are pretty high. If I had to buy an external drive I would either choose Western Digital's "MyBook" or Seagate's "FreeAgent" drives. Personally, I'm old school and prefer Seagate discontinued older external drives.
I have a WD "MyBook" and am coveting their "Passport Portable." It's super sleek and would fit perfectly with my mobile recording studio. Poor mac mini... that's an entire computer right there, not just an external hard drive.
Whoa. Thanks for the warnings on the LaCies... Guess I'll have to live with it until it fails, but good to know.
I have two of the LaCie Porsche drives. One is 160gb and I've had it for... maybe five years?—and it has never failed in any way. Ever.
The second I just bought, 500GB for backing up my new 250GB Macbook Pro. Although I've only had it since December 2007, I haven't had any problems with it either.
...but my next will probably be one of these: http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11013