In that price range, virtually all the products are made by four or five manufacturers and then packaged for whichever brandname.

Storage is so cheap now that I just plan to buy another external drive in the near future as backup, and then replace one every couple years. If they last long enough, I'll even consider RAIDing them.

I have no opinion, scody, but I am following this thread because I'm going to have to do the same thing for my music soon too. Thank you for asking the question!

I've used the Maxtors and been happy with them.

Like matildaben, I've used the Maxtors. No problems. We use them at work as well.

Here's a 500GB Maxtor for $128 from NewEgg, and I've also used several Maxtors with no problems.

"If they last long enough" and I am quite confident they will; the manufacturing technology producing external drives over the last couple years is well understood throughout the industry, and the market has pretty much eliminated the junk.

What mischief said. Six months ago I bought a 300 gig external drive thinking "This is all I'll EVER need!".

Then I set up a WAN. And got TVersity. And hooked my 360 up to said WAN. And bought a PSP, which I now use more as an mp3 and video player than ever I did my video iPod, which I gave to someone as a birthday present recently. Now I need more storage space. Sigh.

I had one crash and eat all my music and photos. It wasn't an Iomega but the crash sucked and made me miserable so I am now wary as hell of them. I will therefore give you the advice a friend who had had the same thing happen to her gave me: transfer your data slooooooowly. If you do it all at once, somehow (and I know, according to techies this is probably impossible or just wrong, I know, but leave me be, I'm happy imagining the little guys in there running around with chunks of data on their heads) it makes the hard drive angry or tired or freaks it out in some way and then it crashes and eats all your data and all you can do is take it sadly back to Circuit City for a refund. So just copy a little at a time and do not, repeat do not, delete the source files until you're really sure your new drive is okay. Like, I suggest at least 3 weeks.

...also defrag often so the heads of the disk don't have to work so hard. Those are the little guys that mgl's talking about ;-)

I'm a compulsive defragger

Samsung is my favorite drive manufacturer, because they're the quietest. If I was doing something like what you're doing, I'd probably buy a Linksys NSLU2 network storage device and a couple Samsung drives, cram it all into an old PC case (or use an external enclosure), then tuck the whole works away in a closet. Then again, I'm a dork.

I've had iffy results from Maxtor. Seagate and Western Digital seem to work well for me.

Go to Tom's Hardware review and see what you can find, YMMV.

Alls I know is I got 5 of the Lacie Porche-branded 250 externals and 3 of them went bad within a year.

At one point, about 3-5 years ago, every single person I knew who had a maxtor or various ages, had one pack. They had a great RMA process, but it didn't really help with the lost data.

I've seen lots of WD failures too, as they are popular with the large manufacturers, in my experience.

At home, since the Maxtor failure, I've purchased only Seagate, and I've never been disappointed. Zero failure rate. And, Seagate was the first, I believe, to offer a 5 year warranty. I think. As I say, none have failed, so my warranty knowledge is weak!

I liked our Buffalo TeraStations so much at work I bought one for home. I came pretty close to buying a ReadyNAS, but hoo boy are they pricey.

"do not, repeat do not, delete the source files until..."

You should not delete your source files until after you make a backup copy of all those files on your new drive. The keyword here is redundancy.

They're so cheap now, that you can buy two and have redundant backups. Backing up onto DVDs is also another option for your second backup.

I'm happy with my OWC Mercury Elite Aluminum. The drive in mine is a Seagate ST350063, 500GB.

Both of my friends who bought LaCie-branded drives for their businesses have had failures.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone (though people should feel free to keep chiming in). I'll go through the links and suggestions tonight and hopefully get something this week... I've got my hard drive so full that the whole thing's running like molasses these days.

I wish I could favourite this thread.

I have a little home network, and I do a lot of music and photography, so I really need a 500GB... thanks for the recommendations.

yep, great thread. i'm in the market for one of these myself, and i've been eying either the WD or the Seagate. BTW, doesn't seagate own maxtor now?