What to look for in an external HDD?

I will probably be buying an external HDD in the near future, and I wondered if anyone can recommend any brands that I should look out for, or any that I should avoid.

I'm planning to use it for stuff which is too important to delete, but not really important enough to make a proper backup of, so it won't actually get used all that often. It will spend most of the time switched off, and so transfer rate isn't really an issue. The issue for me is reliability. I'd like it to keep working for at least a reasonable amount of time.

I know it's not possible to guarantee which drives will be reliable, so what I'd like as much as anything is anecdotal evidence. If you've had a crappy external drive that quit on you after a couple of months, please let me know who makes it. If you had an excellent external drive that gave you a long troublefree service, tell me that about too. Hopefully with enough responses, I should be able to narrow the field to the decent manufacturers.

If anyone has retailer links in the UK to offer, then that would be just the cherry on the cake, but even if you're recommending something from the US, I might be able to find the same model over here, so go right ahead.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I bought a LaCie 250GB external USB2 drive from Dabs like 6 months ago, and it's literally only spent in total just a few hours turned off since I got it.

It performs on par with my internal drive (a Hitachi 7K80, 7200rpm, 2mb cache in UDMA mode 6), which is pretty cool.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ey=11157,50131

Of course, if you look around, theres higher capacity versions of the same model for not much more at all ~

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I assembled a 400GB external HDD about a month ago. The total cost was about $120. I bought a Vantec USB 2.0 external enclosure from Newegg.com for $20 and an internal IDE 400GB Seagate Drive for $95 from outpost.com.

It has been running nonstop for about 1 month now and the Seagate drive has a 5 yr warranty. The enclosure is nice as well. I have had no issues at all. I would recommend this route as you get more space for the money.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I also want to ask question regarding hdd. Right now I'm using Seagate Barracuda 80 gb internal. I'm using IDE2USB and an adapter to connect it with my usb. Rarely, but occasionally it gives funny noise as if there is a noise interference (such as cellphone signal) around it.

When it happens, usually the hdd starts tickling and I couldn't access the data. I usually plug out the adapter and replug it again after awhile, usually the problem wont reappear afterward.

I don't know what causes the problem, is it because the hdd breaking down or possibly, problem on electricity? (I don't use UPS and such) my friend recommended me to backup it and buy usb enclosure for 5.25 hdd instead keep using ide2usb. But since I only have $70 in hand, I'm not sure If I could buy both DVD writer and hdd enclosure soon

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?