Suggestions about external HDs?

[Ren]

So, yup!I need to buy one, but I have no idea on what to choose.I was thinking of buying a 500GB one, since I got to backup a load of stuff and using DVDs all the time takes me too much time, really!I noticed that the price leap between 250 and 500 GB HDs isn't THAT big and that's what made me concentrate on those.

However, I don't know anyone who can recommend me some good brands nor enlighten me on which parameters I should pay attention to.Do you think Ebay is a good place to look for lower prices?

Thanks in advance!

[Herb_Montes]

I have no less than three external drives on my system.  I use the Buffalo drives which have both Firewire and USB interfaces.  Because I have a Sony Vaio I use the Firewire connection.  Two are 250 Gig while my latest is a 500 Gig.  When I bought the 500 Gig it went for the same price the the 250 Gigs cost last year, $160 each.  So the cost of storage is coming down.  So far they have been very reliable and fast drives.  Here is the link to the one I recently got:

http://shop1.outpost.com/product/5424589?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Here's a picture of my computer station.  You can see the external drives just on the other side of the desktop PC.

http://hmontes.animationforum.net/workstation1.jpg

[Ren]

Thank you very much for your comment!

[Kaetemi]

I've got 2 Western Digital MyBook external drives here, and their boot-up times are EXTREMELY slow. If they're already connected to my machine when it's starting up, it adds an insane amount of time to it. Also have a Western Digital Elements external drive, which is really cheap, and is a lot faster, works already a few seconds after it's plugged into the USB.