External firewire hard drive to go with Mac Mini.

I've had the best experience with the newer Lacie drives. I've had some trouble with newer Seagates (which surprises me). I've had good experience with Western Digital, but I've mainly used their USB versions.

Don't rule out using a NAS or Apple Time Capsule. They can be placed anywhere and eliminate one more physical connection to the music source. Also evaluate the Apple Remote app and the AirPort Express. Very handy devices.... ;)

What type of internal hard drive are you using with the Mac Mini? I think good SSD drives sound much better if you are connecting the Mini directly to the DAC.

I use FANTOM GF1000T (1 Terabyte) with MAC Mini on Firewire interface. One is storage for ALAC while the other is backup. Drives are $99 after rebate here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822207009&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives+-+External-_-FANTOM+DRIVES-_-22207009

Fantom is drive builder - I'm not sure what HD is inside but it is Firewire 400 only (My MacMini doesn't have 800) and 5000rpm. Drive is running cool (heavy aluminum case) and quiet plus have good reputation (check user review at Newegg and Amazon).

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.