I'm thinking of getting one for backup purposes since I only have one hard drive in my PC. I do have a firewire connection, so that is an option as far as connection goes. Could anyone recommend a good brand?

Rumor has it that the Maxtor line of external drives are really reliable! No personal experience with the external ones on this end although I do use their internal drives and only had one failure on a brand new drive which they rapidly replaced.

I know this isn't what you asked, but why don't you add a second internal drive Greg? Are you using like 3 cd type devices?

I'm just curious.

Oh, check out www.storagereview.com

Sharon

Sharon - All the drive bays are filled. DVD, CD burner, Hard Drive and Floppy. It's small box! I figured since I have a firewire connection, I would get good performance from an external drive.

Thanks for the link!

ItzRandy - I had a Maxtor in a previous pc and it never crashed so I will definitely look at their externals

If youve got the connectibility for an internal hard drive don't pay a premium for an external device. Just tape the drive in the box wherever it will go, horizontal or vertical it doesn't matter.

On hard drive reliability I've had no problems with IBM or Maxtor though a Fuji did die on me a couple of years ago after little use. A friend is still using a 2 gig Seagate I originally bought in 95. I remember the salesman looking amazed at why I needed such a huge hard drive !!