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I just got a Seagate Free Agent with FW 800.
So far so good. surprised it wasn't mentioned.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the OWC Mercury-on-the-Go line of drives. I've used them for years, they're very reliable, available in many sizes, and I've never had a problem with them. Furthermore, OWC's company is a joy to work with and stands behind their products consistently.

Nothing but insanely high cost solutions in your article.
You can buy a 500gB SATA 2.5" drive for $100 and a self-powered enclosure for $20. The assembly skill involved wouldn't even challenge a worker at GM and it would take you 2 minutes vs. 60 in Detroit,
As for the LaCie rugged, you really should dismantle your test products before recommending them. The 'ruggedness' consists of a bottom of the line Seagate drive, four bits of rubber inside and a rubber sleeve. A 60% premium for that? I know, as my 'rugged' was decidedly less so after its HDD gave out and I replaced it with a reliable Japanese drive.
Get real and start trying to save your readers money before you all lose your jobs. And start testing what you recommend, rather than just repeating press releases.

Kinda hard to give the nod to products they aren't "given" to test (read: promote). Ah, gotta love MacWorld.

I have a 160GB LaCie rugged. I quickly realized its "rugged-ness" is the fluorescent orange baby buggy bumper. Which is not bad. Easy to grip, and the vibrating orange color reminds me to be careful with it. I presume if it landed baby buggy bumper corner down, the rubber might protect it somewhat.
But I won't try to tell you it is fast, even on FW 800. I've not benchmarked the drive, but my sense of it is so-so on speed.
On the other hand, I just bought a new Western Digital 500GB WD5000MT "My Passport Studio Portable HD.
Zing. Comes with FW 800 and includes FW 400 to 800 cable. Runs on USB 2, but advises may require a two plug USB cable.
ALSO comes with WD "Turbo" Drivers for Mac. Says they work with FW and USB. I tried it briefly without the drivers, and it was plenty fast. Added the drivers, and it was plenty fast. Don't know if the drivers make it faster, but if you were having to run such a drive USB, it sure would be nice.
Oh. And the cost. $199 on the Apple Store, paid $40 less through Amazon.
My daughter has been using hers for weeks moving huge graphic files for work. Mine is new. I recommend this one strongly for value, capacity, and speed. Obviously, haven't had enough time to comment on longevity.

I was a big fan of the G-Tech drives and recommended them frequently. That was until I had one go bad. That's not the issue, as it can happen to any hard drive. The issue is that it took them over two weeks to send me a replacement after they received the dead unit I shipped back. Two weeks in which I couldn't get a return email or phone call.
Now contrast this with OWC which replaced a defective desktop external drive within 24 hours. I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't go without my portable drives for weeks.

I bought a Western Digital My Passport for Mac in January. It looked nice and had FireWire and a five year warranty. What wasn't indicated on the box was that I might need to use the RMA service 60 times during the warranty timeline: the drive lasted three weeks before crashing and burning and I'm waiting for the replacement for the second drive, a refurbished one that failed two weeks after it was sent to replace my first one.
I am now using a Seagate FreeAgent Go which I bought after the first WD crashed. Rock solid, runs cooler and was cheaper than the WD.

Shame there's no more development on Smartdisk Firelites. They were superb and I've had loads of them over the past 5 years

I've got a iomega 250 GB shaped like a brandy/whisky flask. Bright red, works nicely, great conversation piece; also a 250 gb Maxtor one-touch, both on a macbook air. no problems really. From time to time not quite enough juice in the USB to fire them up, but this usually goes away in a few seconds... don't know why. Had a few glitches, reformatted one (wherefrom the 2 drives: one at home, one for the road). Use them for archives I might need (old emails, previous projects, photos, etc) but don't have the space on my inner HD (only 128 SSD). Also have a 750 LaCie for Time Machine at home.

Why does MacWorld always ignore the OWC drives, which are in every way superior to the LaCie drives?!? I have to question the judgment of the magazine staff. Even LaCie's Rugged Hard Disk does not include specs on vibration resistance. The website and the manual also give various specs on drop height: Web says "Maximum Drop Height: 35 in. / 90 cm in non-operating mode (dropping is not recommended in operating mode)".
Manual says "Maximum Drop Height: 86.6 in. / 2.2 m in non-operating mode (dropping is not recommended in operating mode)". What are the operating maximum vibration specs in x,y, and z axis?
Also, as many people have noted before OWC has fantastic service, and LaCie's service is in my experience extremely poor to non-existent, plus their drives easily konk out.

I have to agree with those comments regarding OWC drives. I have purchased 25 plus hard drives over the past few years for my office, friends and personal. I have tried Western Digital (which have a problem with bootability on Macs), LaCie, Maxtor and a few off brands. I have had no problems with any of the OWC drives . . . all have worked great for cloning and booting. The couple of times I had to call customer service (couldn't figure out why my 320gig drive only formatted as 128gig in an old laptop . . . it was due to the laptop's limitations), they sent out the appropriate size drive and I received it the next day! Though I now live and work overseas, and it's a hassle for me to find people traveling to bring me the hard drives I need, I won't buy anything but OWC.

The absolutely best solution for external HDs is build your own.
1. Check out drives at Newegg and Amazon for reader comments and only buy drives with around 5% negatives (the approximate failure rate for good drives).
2. Do the same for an external enclosure. McAlly is the best value to performance ratio.
3. Build your drive.
Should you desire a pre-built, OWC is by far the best solution. They do NOT make hard drives, thus are not a "brand" per se, but they do select top-notch drives to put into the enclosures that they do make.
For those not inclined to build their own, OWC has for years been the best choice.

I agree with the praise for OWC, especially the suggestion to build your own drives with their kits. It allows you to get a top-quality drive with a 5-year warranty for about the same as you'd pay for a pre-built drive with a 1- or 2-year warranty.
My understanding is that the warranty lengths are based on factory mean-time-between-failure rates. A longer warranty should equate with a longer-lasting hard drive.
That said, I do have one of the LaCie Rugged drives, and it's been great.