Gadgetory

when the iPod first came out everyone went nuts over the idea of having five gigabytes of portable storage it costs $400 today you can fit a terabyte in your pocket for a fraction of the cost the hell with the cloud hard drives are better cheaper faster and more portable than ever and this top five were counting down the best values and portable drives ranked by CNET senior editor dome no starting off at number five the silicon power armor AAT not only does this drive meet the spec for military drop testing but it can also be submerged in water for up to 30 minutes 500 gigabyte drive is about $80 but a full terabyte can be had for just a little extra at number four the Seagate Go flex slim it's the only ultra slim portable hard drive on the market at 0.35 inches thick it's basically the size of an iPhone 4s the capacity maxes out of 500 gigabytes for just under $100 so you're not getting an insane amount of storage but Dan is that thing small but number three goes even smaller if the Lexar jumpdrive triton it's probably been a while since you've been excited about a thumb drive but this one's pretty special it's the first one we've seen that uses the USB 3.0 spec 70 dollars gets you 32 gigs and twice that gets you 64 if you ever wanted to turn your entire music library into something small enough to be a choking hazard this one's the way to go at number two the Seagate backup plus this one's a great all-around value in a one-stop solution if the goal is to backup your computer it can be made to work with USB 3.0 firewire or Thunderbolt the killer feature for me is an automatic backup of your Facebook and your Flickr photos and finally our number one wallet friendly portable drive is the WD my passport portable sure it's not the thinnest drive or the prettiest but it's a great value and it's also the first portable hard drive to offer up to two terabytes of storage we're taking everything with you and moving at the speed of USB 3.0 this is your best option for more top fives like these head over to top-5 cnet.com i'm donald bell thanks for watching you