interest in external hard drive

1. dont bother with 40-60gb hard drives. i think the prices are very good for 150-300gb hard drives right now.

2. if you are doing as a strict backup drive, a 8mb cache usb drive can be found very very cheap. if you are using it for more than backup, consider a 16mb cache fw400 drive.

3. decide if you are comfortable buying a drive and case seperately or want it already done. <it is very easy to do. i would say a 2 out of 10 with 10 being tough> just make sure to match drive and case (ide&ide, sata&sata, or pata&pata)

4. search the buying tips or hardware forum for external hard drive. you will find lots of recent articles with links to seperates or premade deals.

5. check newegg.com and outpost.com and maybe even circuitcity.com (if you are ok with rebates) for lots of hd options. Most here will recommend Seagate given their 5 year warranties.

I agree- go for a bigger size as you get more space/$.

Also, buy an internal 3.5'' drive and an enclosure- avoid buying pre-made units from companies like LaCie or Western Digital. It takes literally 5 minutes to put the drive in the enclosure, and saves you money.

Newegg usually has some good deals on internal drives, and with Labor Day right around the corner Circuit City, CompUSA, and Best Buy will probably be running deals as well.

Saw this on a deal website this morning. It is a much larger drive than you mentioned but with a fw400 enclosure, you will be set for a long long time.

Seagate 500gb SATA 16mb for $189
Seagate rebate list showing $34 rebate for this drive
Rebate form

After rebate and adding a good enclosure, you are set for under $200.