External firewire hard drive to go with Mac Mini.

the seagate 1.5tb drives have performed very well for me. also, remember to get 2 so you can backup your drive. don't be fooled by the drobo, raid, etc... always have a backup. also, for macs, use firewire 800 if your mac has that capability.
btw: a ssd will not get you better sound. there are a few people that will tell you that certain hard drives will get you better sound also. the ssd's that you can install in pc's/macs are the cheaper ones that will wear out much faster than a hard drive. the better ssd's cost over $10k for a few hundred GB's, the ones for a few hundred are the cheap ones. what ssd's will get you much faster access to the data, faster writes, great for databases with a large # of users, a waste for music (for the price right now). the IOPS/MBPS requirement of reading from a disk for music is quite low also.

I have been happy with my Western Digital 2TB my book studio version. It runs firewire or USB. I had a problem with one of my Lacie drives (I had 5 stacked 250MB drives at one point) and I did a little research and seems like the all arrows pointed to the Western Digital drives.

Thanks for your suggestions. Is the WD 2TB mybook studio HD very quiet?

I'm using a 2TB Cavalry (raid configuration) with an iMac and it has worked very well for 3 years now. It has firewire and USB capability. I use the firewire. It is not very quiet though.

Try the aluminum external drives for Other World Computing (http://eshop.macsales.com). You can spec out the internal unit (I recommend a Seagate for low noise) if you give them a call. The techs there are very knowledgeable and may be able to help you pick the best configuration. The cases have no fans, so should be quiet with the right drive mechanism. Other World Computing also sells the NewerTech MiniStack line and these may also work well.