ioSafe has released their new Rugged Portable Hard Drive and as you can see from the video below it is indeed rugged as it withstood 4 blasts from a 12 gauge shotgun. The least expensive model starts at $149 for a 250 GB drive which is about three times as much as a conventional drive of the same capacity. I priced out a 500 GB drive with 5 years of Data Recovery Service at $349. While this is a large sum for an ordinary computer user it is very reasonable for someone that depends on their data to make a living.
Keep in mind that the drive itself could still fail at any point as normal hard drives do. What you are paying for is the shell protecting the hard drive from extreme conditions like being dropped in water, crushed by a car, or dropped. ioSafe does offer a 1 year warranty as well as a 1 year Data Recovery Service which can be used one time should the hard drive fail.
Another nice Bonus that comes with this hard drive is a copy of Genie Timeline backup software – the Pro version which is a $60 retail value. In my opinion if you need a hard drive that is truly rugged this is the way to go.