Home and office PC users have never had it so good: modern hard disks can now hold up to 300 GB - plenty big enough for most of us. If you can make do with half this size, you have a wide choice of models at reasonable prices.

There is a definite convenience factor in to having your music collection, digital photo albums, videos, etc. all together on the same hard disk. However, to gain the ultimate in flexible data storage you need more than a large hard disk, because repeatedly installing and swapping a hard disk between PCs is not a sensible solution either for the drive itself or for the user. There are better ways of going about it.

You can buy a disk caddy system and fit a drive bay to each of your PCs. Then you simply slot the hard disk into your PCs as and when needed. Or, you can buy an external hard disk. There are external hard disk cases on the market fitted with necessary USB and/or FireWire interfaces, but the more convenient option is to choose a complete external hard drive system such as those on offer from the disk drive manufacturers.

We obtained the latest OneTouch 250 GB model from Maxtor and the 160 GB External Hard Drive from Seagate. Both are based on standard hard disks, and include a very elegant case together with features that you won't find on a DIY solution.