Slim Devices SB3 external hard drive

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

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

Audioperv, I must be living a charmed life from a hard drive standpoint. Out of the dozens of hard drives I've owned over the years, only one catastrophically failed, and that was after 4-5 years. One other was DOA. I also build/fix machines for friends, and I've only seen one of them die.

The mean time between failure on drives is in the hundreds of thousands of hours. And I guess my experience backs that up.

That's why I advocate 2 inexpensive and large-capacity drives. The 2nd drive will be a backup to the first (and preferably stored elsewhere, for maximum protection). The backup drive is the true defense against data loss, regardless of the mechanism.

Jeff, get an external drive enclosure such as this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198012

Then get a 500GB SATA drive (Seagate and WD have reliable for me for years). It's a breeze to install. Just remember to get two of them so that one can be used to backup the other.

Michael