Hmmm, maybe I should have rephrased the question. Perhaps "what's the best cheap option?" In other words, out of the cheap stuff (under 100 bucks, preferably) which is the best external drive to go with?
Whatever one has the highest capacity. If you find multiple drives that have the same capacity for different prices, get the cheaper one.
Brands don't mean much in the disk drive world anymore. Some people swear otherwise, but I've never seen any real data to back that up, just stories.
The one other thing you may want to look at is warranty. Seagate offers a longer warranty on their internal drives than some other manufacturers, or at least they used to. I don't know if that extends to the external drives as well, but it might be worth looking at.
What if I've got a Mac and PC that both need to transfer files onto the drive and back out again?
The answer to this question does not depend on which drive you get. This question has to do with how the disk is formatted.
The situation without any additional software is this:
1. Macs can read from - but not write to - hard drives formatted for Windows
2. Windows can neither read from or write to hard drives formatted for the Mac
There are two ways to solve this.
1. Install a free program called "NTFS-3G for Mac OS X", which allows Macs to write to hard drives formatted for Windows. You can find the latest release here:
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/2010/01/ntfs-3g-for-mac-os-x-2010116.html
2. Purchase and install a program called MacDrive on your Windows computer(s):
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
However, the easiest way is to choose a third option - share files over the network, or with a USB flash drive.
