Slim Devices SB3 external hard drive

I use a pair of 500 GB LaCie d2 quadra drives--one for storage and one for backup. I have them connected to my macbook via firewire for the storage drive and USB 2 for the backup. I've had them for about six months and so far no problems with either (knock on wood). Whatever brand you end up choosing, I would definitely recommend getting 2 drives with at least 500 GB of storage, or more if you can afford it.

Regardless of the brand's reputation, external hard drives can always fail. Without a backup, you are faced with the morale-crushing prospect of re-ripping/re-downloading all your music. I make it a habit with each new cd I'm ripping or piece of music I download to immediately copy it to my backup drive. Call me paranoid, but experience has taught me well. Good luck in your search.

I thoroughly agree with Eslaudio's suggestion of having two on hand, one to function as a backup of the other. The prices for large drives is low enough nowadays to do that.

You can also just get an individual drive (500 GB is probably the best bang for the buck) from, say, Seagate or Western Digital, and then get an external enclosure from Icy Dock or Macally and put it together yourself. The nicer external enclosures are a breeze to install a drive into. Check out newegg.com, which is my favorite place to shop for computer parts.

I'd recommend an external drive with both USB and Firewire interfaces. If your computer supports it, you might also consider one with an eSATA interface, which can be considerably faster.

Good luck,

Michael

Look here http://www.newegg.com or here http://www.pricewatch.com for best price on hard drives.

I have recently seen 1TB IOMEGA external drives advertised for as little as $244. This would yield a price of less than $500 for a twin drive system for full backup. Here is the relevant IOMEGA page:
http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/family.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=26891277&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=26890319
I am not sure of long term reliability of IOMEGA drives. I chatted at RMAF with the McIntosh rep. . . McIntosh is using twin Seagate 500Gb Mission Critical drives for their music server offering. This simply points to the fact that manufacturers offer different levels of reliability for different applications. . . and what is found at Best Buy or Fry's may not be the most hardened versions. A call to Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung, Toshiba will let you determine what are their most reliable or mission critical offerings. Note: Maxtor is now part of the Seagate group.

For a slightly different opinion than the previous poster's, it's much more common to have a "user failure" (ie, accidental deletion or other form of software corruption of the files) than a hard drive failure. Most hard drives produced today are remarkably reliable; go with inexpensive offerings from well-known manufacturers, and just get an extra one for backups. That's what will really protect your data.

Michael