If you walk into a home or office where a computer is, present odds are you are going to find some sort of external storage solution. More often than not computer users resort to USB external hard drives to back up their data and to store files.

Western Digital has announced that its My Book line of external hard drives is now available with 2TB of storage in a single disk model. That means that big storage takes up less space on or under your desk. The new 2TB disk is available in the My Book Studio, Mac Edition, Home Edition, and Essential Edition models.

When it comes to providing storage for multiple computers on a network in an office or home, the easiest way to do that is with a network storage device. These devices connect directly to a network and offer external storage for any computer on the network.

Iomega has announced a pair of new network storage devices in different capacities called the StorCenter Pro ix4-100. The ix4-100 comes in either 2TB or 4TB capacity and both versions use four internal hard drives that are hot swappable.

The ASUS F50 and F70 range of notebooks sport features tailored specifically for users who want both high definition audio visual entertainment and extensive multitasking capabilities. Users looking for large screen entertainment and massive storage will want the Asus F70SL, the world’s first 17.3″ notebook with 16:9 golden aspect ratio for cinematic viewing and dual hard disk drives providing up to 1 TB in storage space.

The Asus F50 and F70 range of notebooks come standard with high definition audio quality and a 16:9 Full High Definition display for high contrast rate, brightness and color saturation. An HDMI port allows users to connect their notebooks to larger external LCD displays or other HDMI-capable devices.

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.

One of the products that I see a lot of each year at CES is external storage solutions. The usual companies like Seagate and other places offer a full line of external solutions, but it never ceases to impress me at the number of small firms I have not heard of that offer external storage.

One of the smaller firms, which I have heard of before, called Verbatim has announced a pair of new external hard drives that feature fast 7200 rpm 3.5-inch hard drives inside small enclosures. The drives feature quad interfaces and work with Mac and Windows computers.

We got a chance to get our hands on Griffin’s new Simplifi desktop device recently and we feel they really got the name right on this one. The Simplifi is a small Swiss Army Knife of accessories packed into a smooth silver box that adds some convenience and maybe even a touch of sophistication to your desk.

For starters, the device is a dock and charger for your Apple iPhone and/or iPod. It has the docking port right on top and comes with little plastic adapters to custom …

External storage is an important part of any backup strategy. No one wants to lose all the data on their computers in the event of an accident. Backing up data like documents, photos, music, video files, and other content on your PC is often best done to an external hard drive.

Seagate is one of the biggest names in external storage and today it announced its 2008 line of FreeAgent drives. The flagship drive of the line is the FreeAgent Go, which is only 12.5mm thick. The slim profile of the drive makes it the slimmest available today. Storage capacities are up to 500GB.

External hard drives are a great way to protect important data stored on your computer in the event of a computer crash. The bad part about external storage is that the drives are typically small and easy to steal. That means if the data on the drive is sensitive, you might want to encrypt the data.

The catch with encrypting data is that the data is only as safe as your password. Aluratek has introduced a new Tornado plus external hard drive that features RFID keys. The drive can’t be accessed and the data stored on the drive won’t be unencrypted without first swiping one of the two included RFID keys.

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.

Western Digital (WD) said today it was introducing a dual drive storage option to its popular My Book line of external hard drives. This new model is known as the WD My Book Mirror Edition and you find it pricing around $290 for 1TB or $550 for 2TB.

The WD My Book Mirror Edition is a dual drive system designed to automatically and continusously duplicate your data. It does RAID-based data protection to mirror your files twice. Included backup software also lets you do additional, more selective backups.

LaCie said today it would be unveiling a 1TB version of its Little Big Disk Quadra external hard drive for use on the go. The LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra 1TB is pricing at around $660.

The LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra 1TB is an external hard drive which can fit “into the palm of your hand.” It consists of two 2.5-inch hard drives working together in a RAID 0 configuration. Data transfers speeds are said to be upwards of 110MB/s using e-SATA or 80MB/s via FireWire 800.

Iomega announced today a 1TB upgrade to its line of eGo portable hard drives. This larger storage capacity drive prices at around $270.

These new 1TB “Super eGo” external hard drives are 3.5-inch drives which store up to 4 million photos, 18,500 hours of music or 1,500 hours of video. Three color options are available and USB 2.0 is the interface for data transfers to other computers.

Buffalo Technology has announced a new external hard drive which offers you 1TB of storage room and multiple interfaces to work with. It is known as the DriveStation Combo4 and you’ll find the 1TB option (HD-HS1.0TQ) pricing you around $350.

The Buffalo DriveStation Combo4 offers you four options for interfaces with a computer – eSATA, FireWire 400/800 and USB 2.0. This choice of options makes this external hard drive useful for either Mac or PC owners, with Buffalo saying users will get an added 20 percent faster data speed transfer rate due to its special “TurboUSB” software and the face this drive is a 7200-RPM SATA model.

The fun loving hard drive folks at LaCie recently unveiled another stylish hard drive from industrial designer Neil Poulton. This one is noted for offering a triple interface and is called the Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton. Three storage sizes are available, ranging up to 1TB, and pricing is at a maximum around $340.

The latest LaCie Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton lets users connect to it through USB 2.0, eSATA and FireWire 400. This makes it cross compatible with both Windows and Mac computers. It has the typical stylish look LaCie seems to be pumping into its desktop drives these days, right down to the blue LED effect and its ambient underside glow.

We’ve always liked reporting about new LaCie external hard drives – they are typically very cool looking. It is a no-brainer therefore to let you know about the company’s quiet release of some new models, with the one grabbing our eye the most being the LaCie Desktop Hard Disk 1TB model.

The 1TB LaCie Desktop Hard Disk isn’t the best looking external hard drive ever released by the company but it still will look pretty nice sitting on your desk none the less. Beyond the simple black design you’ll find what LaCie says is a quiet and compact product for its size. It is USB 2.0 capable when connecting to a PC or Mac.