Best External Hard Drives Under $100

Iomega Prestige, One of the cheapest but high rated USB 2.0 Plug&Play 1 TB External Hard Drives. Energy efficiency, durability and reliability are the main features of this external hard drive. 7200 RPM speed and 8MB cache is enough to achieve high speed data access. Many Amazon customers also comment that it is one of the fastest not showing any latency. USB also performs well for data transfer at a rate of 480 Mbps. It ships formatted to NTFS, so it is already ready for usage. Unique aluminum design is attractive, modern and you can put the hard drive device vertically or horizontally. The package includes a licensed easy desktop backup software you can use. There is also key to access free online 2GB backup at Mozy service. Overall, one of the best and affordable 1 TB external hard drives which costs under $100. Compatible both for Macs and PCs. A great deal.

A tough competitor to IOmega. Western Digital My Book Essential 1 Terabyte also shares almost the same features. High speed USB 2.0. Easy plug&play setup without any install cd and ready to operate with any computer which is a Mac or PC. It ships with a 1 year warranty. The advantage of Western Digital My Book Essential External Hard Drive is that it is almost the size of a paperback book. So, you can simply put in your shelf like any other book for visual purposes. It is sleek and stylish. Another cool feature is that the device will turn off itself after 10 minutes of inactivity. It will turn itself on and off with the computer attached. I recommend this device with its high reliability rate which is essential for data storage.

As a final advice, always run more than one copies of your backups on multiple external hard drives. External hard drives also can die some day in the future like any other technology items. With a careful backup planning, you can easily avoid data disasters.

Designed by award winning design guru Neil Poulton, Lacie 301304U 1 TB External Hard Drive USB 2.0 is quite small, sleek and stylish storage device for your desktop. I adore the look of mysterious black box design with mirror gloss. Not only its look but also its technical features are strong. It is also highly recommended by customers and geeks like IOmega and WD models which I have reviewed previously. USB transfer rate is up to 480Mbps as a standard. 7200 RPM and 8MB cache buffer is also no wonder. Many costumers agree that it is one of the silent drives in 1TB external hard drive market. What I like most is the 2 year warranty and free one year unlimited off-site online backup license with encryption for privacy. It ships with a smart backup software which will only do backups of changed or new files automatically from attached computer. So, it is very easy to operate. Recommended for computer hardware geeks.