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Iomega continues to impress us with its sexy, sleek external hard drives. We just recently reviewed the eGo Helium, a drive catered to Apple fanboys. There's also the eGo Camo that's useful for secretly accessing your data in the forest, and the eGo Brown Leather that makes a perfect present for your friendly neighborhood alcoholic. This time, they're introducing two new drives to their eGo line. Check 'em out!

This is the eGo Encrypt. It actually bears a striking resemblance to the eGo Helium, with its silver case and clean lines, but this one is a little thicker and is NTFS formatted out of the box. This one also bumps the security up a notch using government grade 128-bit encryption to protect the data inside. In addition, if the drive is disconnected from a computer while in use, the drive will automatically lock itself and require a predesignated password to access it again.

It also comes with a clear version of the Drop Guard Xtreme band that we first saw on the eGo Camo. You can take it on and off, but we recommend you keep it on just in case you happen to drive it from seven feet up- it'll keep the drive protected. Plus, what're you going to do with a loose rubber band? It's 320GB for $150--a little more than the eGo Helium, but still an excellent deal at $0.47 per gigabyte.

This one looks even more familiar than the Encrypt. The eGO BlackBelt portable hard drive is the same drive as the eGo Camo, but...it's black. So if you have enough disruptive pattern material in your house and just need a simple, secure drive, the BlackBelt is your go-to guy. Again, it includes the Drop Guard Xtreme, so feel free to use it to protect yourself against would-be assailants. This one is 250GB for $120, which factors out to a cool $0.48 per gigabyte.

We'll be getting both drives into our labs before the holiday break, so look out for a full length review coming soon!

We loved the Editors' Choice winning Seagate FreeAgent Go external hard drive for its modern design and inexpensive cost per gigabyte, so we're even happier to report that they now come in a wider variety of colors. Just in time for the holiday season, Seagate just announced 10 exclusive shades: think pink, ruby red, solar orange, spring green, forest green, royal blue, sky blue, champagne gold, titanium silver, and tuxedo black. They're available online in 250GB ($120), 320GB ($150), and 500GB ($200) capacities.

To sweeten the deal, if you buy or receive a FreeAgent Go from November 28 through January 31, 2009, you'll also get 50 free songs from eMusic, one free movie rental, and 50 percent off your first year's subscription to photo and video sharing site SmugMug. Check out our full review and stuff a stocking with one for the holiday. Isn't expansive data storage the most rewarding gift of all?

(Credit: Lenovo)

It's difficult for external portable hard drives to stand out against the competition since they're judged mostly on cost per gigabyte, connectivity, and aesthetics. Lenovo jumps into the game by making a case for onboard security.

Its ThinkPad "Vault" USB Portable Secure Hard Drive is protected by the "128-bit advanced encryption security standard" and is actually built into the hardware, similar to the Maxtor Black Armor drive. The Lenovo ThinkPad hard drive also has a built-in USB 2.0, as well as a physical keypad built into the face of the chassis, allowing up to 10 users and one administrator to access the drive using unique keychains.

The drive isn't cheap, though, as the company's asking $179 for the 160GB drive and $219 for the 320GB model. Ninety cents per gigabyte is a tough pill to swallow, especially when you consider the Iomega eGo Helium external hard drive only costs 45 cents per gig. Both versions will be available later this month--would you pay double the price just for the peace of mind that your data is totally safe? Let us know in the comments section!

The FreeAgent Go external hard drive by Seagate wins our coveted Editor's Choice award for three reasons: Design, cost per gigabyte, and speed. There are a ton of external drives out there to choose from, but we can definitely say that the FreeAgent Go takes the cake. Seagate offers the drive in multiple colors and capacities and the inexpensive price makes it perfect for users that need to access data on the run.

The FreeAgent Go is available in four colors (red, white, blue, and black) and with capacities up to 320 gigabytes. For our purposes, Seagate sent us a 320GB model to test that will run you $150, or $0.48 per gigabyte. In relation to their competitors' prices, the FreeAgent Go is dirt cheap- up until now, the typical price per GB ran around $0.56, so you're getting a great deal with the FreeAgent.

(Credit: Iomega)

If LaCie is trying to lock up the fashionista market by hiring European designers to tart up their storage devices, Iomega seems to be sending an entirely different message with its "eGo" line of portable drives.

To wit: A few months back it released a version that bore a striking resemblance to a hip flask, and now it's come out with a model dressed in full camouflage fatigues. The 250GB "Camo eGo" is also outfitted with a black "Iomega Power Grip," adding "a style of adventure and intrigue to the eGo color kaleidoscope." (Note to Iomega: Overthink much?)

Apparently positioning itself as the bad boy of the storage world, the eGo also continues the camo theme that has increasingly infected gadgets in general, from Skullcandy headphones and Motorola walkie-talkies to Hummer phones and the latest Mobiado handset. The closest we'll get, however, is some MP3 sunglasses.

(Credit: Mvix)

The competition for multimedia HD hard drives gets more intense by the day, but few can compete with this item when it comes to portability. The Mvix MV-2500U may be the only device we've seen in its category that's touted as being "pocket-friendly."

But that's exactly what it is, according to its dimensions of 5 by 3 inches and--get this--only a half-inch thick. Even at that diminutive size it manages to cram in a 2.5-inch hard drive and compatibility with practically every video and audio format imaginable, with capacities of 80GB, 160GB, or 250GB, Engadget says. And it looks good too.

Not long ago, laptop hard drives hit 500GB, which was, in my opinion, not a big deal. Nonstop leaps in hard-drive storage capacity over recent years have made me, and most of us for that matter, sort of desensitized, if not snobbish. Something of highest-number gigabytes has just come out and yet it already feels like "been there, done that. So what? There's going to be something bigger, soon!"

The Mercury On-The-Go works with both PCs and Macs.

(Credit: OWC)

However, I'm intrigued by the Mercury On-The-Go portable hard drive that OWC announced Tuesday. This is not because it uses the all-new 500GB laptop hard drive, but rather because of its flexibility, portability, compatibility, and a nice design. The combination of things makes this drive cool.

The Mercury supports USB 2.0, Firewire 400, and Firewire 800 and, most importantly, it is fully Firewire bus-powered. This means no extra power adapter to carry along if you use it with a Firewire port.

If you use a USB port, there are instances that you might need the included separate power adapter. The drive is about the size of the hard drive itself and weighs about the same. Although OWC is a vendor that focuses primarily on Macs, the Mercury On-The-Go works with PCs too. It comes with a full retail version of Prosoft DataBackup III for OS X and NovaStor NovaBackup for Windows. It works with Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine too.

Generally, this looks like a great drive for travelers, especially if you are a Mac user. You can purchase it right now for $360 at OWC.

(Credit: Prestigio)

If ever there was a sign that geekdom had gone mainsteam, it would be the marketing of portable hard drives as fashion and designer items. And until now our personal favorite, for obvious reasons, was one that resembles a pocket flask.

But there's a new contender coming from Prestigio, whose motto is "The Art of Hi-Tech." Not only is the "Data Safe II" bound in leather, as others have been, but it also resembles a retro-styled cigarette case. Uber-Review notes that its specs are far from the fastest for this device, which comes in 80GB and 160GB capacities, but in this case that's apparently the sacrifice one must endure in the name of fashion.

(Credit: Iomega)

(Credit: Metrokane)

You know that business is tight when hard-drive manufacturers start competing for fashion designers to get an edge on one another. But Iomega just became our hands-down favorite for coming up with a portable version that's a looks just like an item that's near to our hearts, quite literally: a flask.

The company is touting its "eGo" line for having decent capacities (160GB to 250GB) at reasonable prices ($140 to $230), according to Slippery Brick. We, however, know subliminal advertising when we see it--especially when it's not so subliminal. All this 2.5-inch drive needs is a USB port that doubles as a spout.