Seagate FreeAgent Go
One fine day — and believe me, the day will come — the hard drive on your laptop will up and die, and it will be either a) a disaster, especially if you haven't turned in that 20-page term paper yet, or b) little more than an inconvenience. The key, of course, is whether you've got a backup drive handy. About the size of a small paperback novel and weighing in at less than a third of a pound (150 g), the Seagate FreeAgent Go connects to your system via USB, and the included Windows-only software makes full-system backups a breeze. (Don't worry, Mac users — you can always fire up Apple's easy-as-pie Time Machine utility instead.) The 500-GB version of the FreeAgent Go should have room to spare for your mammoth video and music collections.
Price: $150