Keeping your files safe and secure is vital, and a good external drive is a must. While we live in a modern age where cloud storage is a thing - and thankfully so - it's still constrained by upload and download speeds, storage capacity and cost, and not least, the fact you need to be online.

Thus, the humble external drive remains critical for storing your vast troves of valuable and irreplaceable photos, backing up computers, transferring critical documents or large multimedia files, migrating computers from one to another, and boosting the storage in your game console, or so many other purposes.

However, all drives are not equal and Western Digital's My Passport SSD is a blisteringly fast, stylish, durable, and secure model that's definitely worthy of your attention for home, work, and school.

The My Passport SSD is an elegant little unit, coming in five different colours from sedate black, grey, and silver, to the more flashy red and gold. It also comes in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes, allowing you to choose the look and size that suits you.

Looks are one thing; what's important is that it protects your data and you can have confidence in its stability and reliability. Happily, the My Passport SSD delivers read speeds of up to 1,050 MB per second, and write speeds of up to 1,000 MB per second, using NVMe technology.

Its bold metal design is tough enough to handle whatever comes its way. It is shock and vibration resistant, and drop-resistant up to 1.98 metres. That's taller than most of the world's population so you're in luck if you accidentally drop it, as well as if it gets jostled in your bag or backpack. Of course, you don't want to be dropping and banging and shaking your storage device, but you can sleep easy knowing it isn't so delicate or fragile that if you deign to leave your home with it an inadvertent bump or knock is not in any way going to kill it.

It's not only physically protecting your data, but does so with encryption also. The drive includes an option for password-enabled 256-bit AES hardware encryption so you also do not need to worry about your confidential files being read by others, whether you lose it or they have a sneaky peek behind your back. This can't be understated; sure, you can encrypt a drive via various tools but hardware protection offers you the ultimate protection, and it's a huge differentiator in Western Digital's offering to other drives.

Further, Western Digital provides free, easy-to-use backup software to aid you in keeping your computers safe, backing up to the drive or to your cloud accounts all from the one app. Or, you can simply use Apple's automated Time Machine or other backup tools you might prefer.

The My Passport SSD has a USB-C 3.1 interface so it works right out of the box with MacBooks, Microsoft Surface tablets, and other modern devices. The box also includes a USB-A to USB-C adapter so even if you don't have USB-C you're still ready to run. It is backed with a five-year warranty and has a retail price starting at a mere $88. What value do you place on your data to have either no protection, or rely on an inferior unit?