Brinell’s Purestorage line of external HDDs feature and classy exteriors. They’re almost too pretty to carry around and risk scratching that beautiful leather, carbon, wood or stainless steel case. These are probably the sexiest way to carry 160GB to 500GB on your person.

They remind us of old cigarette cases and come equipped with Mini-USB cable connections, a cleaning cloth and backup and synchronizing tool PureSync by Jumping Bytes.

Dane-Elec has just announced a new line of So SuperSpeed hard drives and SSDs which use the up and coming USB 3.0 standard. The drives can hit the amazing speed of 250MBps which is about ten times that of USB 2.0.

Capacities range from 500GB to 2TB for the hard drive. The SSDs come in 80GB and 160GB capacities. The So SuperSpeed drives will hit on December 11th, with the 500GB hard drive costing $180 while the SSDs will cost you $400 and $800 for the 80GB and 160GB capacities.

SimpleTech wants to please tree-huggers everywhere while stealing Panda food for their latest, the [re]Drive, a 500GB external hard drive that’s ensconced in recyclable aluminum, and “renewable, naturally grown bamboo.” Poor pandas. What will they eat if we keep using their food in tech?

Interestingly the aluminum and bamboo enclosure acts like a heat sink, so much so that there’s no need for an internal fan, which saves power. But somewhere, a panda cries out in hunger.

LaCie, a maker of rather cool external hard drives, unveiled another one of this sort today in the form of a stylish media unit. It is called the LaCinema Classic and a 500GB version of it retails for around $170.

The LaCie LaCinema Classic is designed to hang out in the media room. Its black and sleek casing is designed by Neil Poulton, known for other LaCie drives. It connects to a HDTV system via HDMI output and works with numerous video, music, and photo formats, including MPEG4, MP3 and JPEG as well as HD-JPEG.

What’s one to do with all of those used up hard drives lying around? Turn them into swappable storage options, ala flash memory cards? That’s the idea anyhow with the new NewerTech Voyager Q hard drive docking station, being shown off at MacWorld and costing around $100.

Looking something like a stylish, small toaster for a hard drive, the Voyager Q is designed to turn any 2.5- or 3.5-inch SATA I/II drive up to 2TB into a bootable and hot-swappable external drive solution. It works with both Macs and PCs and lets its owner boot and swap drives at will, offering transfer speeds with a connected computer of up to 300MB/s.

Iomega is taking the tradeshow road this week to unveil a new network storage solution for media files being showcased in the living room. It is called the Home Media Network Hard Drive and pricing starts around $160.

The Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive, available in 500GB and 1TB storage sizes, is designed to act as both backup server and also media hub. It supports iTunes and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certified devices, allowing it to save, store and stream audio, video and photos to a wide array of home consumer electronics.

External hard drive manufacturer LaCie is out with a new five-bay RAID solution for small and medium size offices. It is called the 5big Network and it has a starting price of around $900.

The LaCie 5big Network is available in 2.5TB, 5TB and 7.5TB storage capacities. It offers up hot swap and seven RAID modes, including RAID 5 and RAID 6. Storage can be expanded on this drive via its USB or eSATA ports.

Etsy seller NES Box didn’t like the fugly exterior of their external hard drive, and so did something about it. That something was to drop it in an old NES cartridge case. The cartridge was just the right size, allowing the drive to fit in perfectly.

It’s powered by USB, so you won’t need any external juice. Created by them, it’s a one of a kind item.(Until someone else makes one) So it will cost you $180 if you want one. The only problem with putting things in old NES cases is that it might get lost among your other cartridges if you aren’t careful. Or your friend might borrow it instead of an actual game.

Buffalo Technology says it is set to release the world’s thinnest external hard drive (currently, that is). The anorexic looking Buffalo MiniStation Shinobi can be yours to fatten with files for around $120 for the 30GB (HD-PT30U2) and $170 for the 60GB (HD-PT60U2).

The Buffalo MiniStation Shinobi models are 5mm (.2 inches) thick and weigh around just two ounces. This makes them pretty very compact and portable, of course, and the fact it is USB-powered just adds to that on-the-go image.

Western Digital (WD) is adding a new storage size option for fans of its My Passport Portable USB Drives. The new storage size is 500GB and you’ll be able to purchase My Passport Elite and My Passport Essential portable drive models for around $220 and $200, respectively.

WD says these new drives weigh less than seven ounces and are somewhat durable. They are USB-bus powered, use synchronization software which lets users sync their changes and offer plug-and-play capability with gaming consoles so one can play music and view photos and video files on a TV.

LaCie has announced its newest four-bay RAID solution for those needing up to 6TB of storage space at their desk. It is called the 4big Quadra and you can pick one up for a starting price of around $900.

The LaCie 4big Quadra offers a native RAID controller which supports seven RAID modes, including RAID 0 and RAID 5. It is said to offer burst transfer rates reaching up to 200-230MB/s through eSATA 3Gbits and comes in a stackable design which is expandable for up to four units and upwards of 24TB of storage space.

Other World Computing is out today with an expanded line up of external FireWire-based hard drives it believes are “value done right.” This line of Neptune drives ranges in size from 80GB to 1TB, with pricing ranging from around $85 to $230.

The Nepture hard drives from OWC  feature two six-pin FireWire 400 ports for connectivity to Macs or PCs. Key hardware specifications include a 7200RPM drive mechanism, up to 32MB data buffer and data transfer rates of up to 400Mbps.

SentrySafe, which is noted for its fire resistant external hard drives, is back in the news with a new 250GB model made in the same vein. The new SentrySafe QA0005 is priced at around $400.

The SentrySafe QA0005, like its predecessors, is designed to withstand select environmental conditions to protect your digital data. It is designed to be waterproof, even when submerged for up to a day, as well as fire resistant up to half-an-hour in 1550-degree temperatures. If it gets that hot, however, we doubt you’ll be donning your fire suit to retrieve it.

Newer Technology, which recently released a more eco-friendly version of its Guardian MAXimus external storage solution, is back again with with a new Guardian MAXimus which revs up to 10,000RPM for faster data transfer rates. It is called the Guardian MAXimus 300GB 10,000RPM and you’ll find it pricing around $900.

The Guardian MAXimus 300GB 10,000RPM offers data transfer rates up to 100MB/sec, depending upon whether you are using the FireWire 800, FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 interface. It sports two 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives in a RAID-1 mirror configuration.

OWC continues to like to see how many directions it can go with its line of Mercury On-The-Go external hard drives. To that end it just announced what it is calling the highest capacity 7200RPM portable bus-powered storage solution on the market - the OWC Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM.

The OWC Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM, available with USB 2.0, USB 2.0+eSATA, FireWire 400+USB 2.0, and FireWire 800/400+USB 2.0 interfaces for a variety of prices starting around $240, offers what OWC says is 60% higher capacity to similar products. It is described as offering “3.5″ desktop hard drive performance in a 2.5″ solution.”