It's not often that a hard drive earns points for good looks. The SimpleDrive 500GB Portable Hard Drive designed by Ferrari sports car designer Pininfarina, is a notable exception. Even better, this stylish machine offers a low price per gigabyte, solid performance, and speedy transfers.

The SimpleDrive's 3.5-inch drive spins at 7,200 rpm, has an 8MB cache buffer, and connects to a PC via a USB port. The included software, ArcSoft's TotalMedia Backup & Record (for Windows users) and TotalMedia Backup (for Mac users), is conveniently housed on the drive, so you can load it on any host system.

The software makes full or incremental backups simple. You can schedule backups, add comments to backup sets, and even password-protect them. Unfortunately, the software can't create a full, bootable backup of your operating system, but you can create a disc image and burn that to a CD or DVD. The speedy SimpleDrive can perform a drag-and-drop backup in under a minute, but performance takes a nosedive using the software.

The Simple Drive is covered by a stingy one-year warranty, but you do get toll-free telephone support and a 2GB online storage account. That said, the SimpleDrive is an outstanding value, thanks to its quick transfer rates, elegant design, and attractive price point.

SimpleDrive 500GB Portable Hard Drive Review
Price range: $169.99 list
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