I was wondering which external hard drive you suggested for the mini
and where to purchase it? I am looking for something around 320GB.
I'd strongly suggest buying the external enclosure and drive separately.
That way, you know what drive you're buying -- plus it's often cheaper,
and you get the benefit of the drive manufacturer's 3-5 year warranty.
Here's Newegg's highest-rated USB/FW400 enclosure; it also gets rave
reviews from many online reviewers. It's aluminum, fanless, and by far
the easiest-to-assemble enclosure anywhere -- just four screws attach
the drive to the quick-swap slide-in drive tray; no messing with cables
or connectors.
Icy Dock -- USB/FW400 enclosure @ $45
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=986&pageID=2689
Add whatever SATA hard drive you like -- 320 GB should be about $75,
500GB about $100. Check Newegg for prices, and tomshardware.com
for performance benchmarks. Don't buy more capacity than you expect
to need in the next 12-18 months; drive prices are dropping rapidly,
and it's easy to upgrade the Icy Dock enclosure. You can even buy an
extra slide-in drive tray and swap drives in less than 1 minute.
Icy Dock -- extra drive tray @ $19.
OWC enclosures also have a good rep, but many of them are still based
on obsolete IDE drives. OWC's SATA-based enclosures tend to be their
more expensive "quad" models with FW800 and eSATA interfaces -- but
FW800 and eSATA interfaces are useless with a Mac Mini.
LK