Seagate, WD, Toshiba Portable Hard Drives for Less Than $100

Small-business owners are always looking for the best bargains their IT budgets can afford, and with mountains of data piling up, businesses need an affordable storage solution. To make matters more complicated, companies rely increasingly on mobile workforces, so hulking desktop storage drives are not always the best option. What is needed is a compact, lightweight and eminently portable product that can fit into a laptop bag or even a coat pocket. Once your data is stored and in transit, however, there are a host of security concerns to worry about—not only when it comes to protecting files, but also the reliability of the drive itself is a factor to consider. Thankfully, businesses on a budget have a wide range of options to consider, with many high-quality manufacturers offering sturdy drives with data encryption and backup capabilities, as well as USB 3.0 technology for faster transfer speeds. eWEEK here looks at 10 portable hard drives that can be bought for less than $100, and found seven that carry capacities of 1 terabyte (TB) under that price point, though we had to drop down to 500 gigabyte (GB) levels for the LaCie, Iomega and G Technology drives. Take a look for yourself and see what combination of features and functionality suits your needs best.