Amano

I'm looking to purchase an 80-120 gb external hard drive for data transfer (~40gb) and for backup purposes. I have some questions I'm hoping I could get some answers for.

1) I will need to transfer data from a Win2k PC to a OS X 10.4 iBook. I see a bunch of hard drives boasting mac and pc compatibility, but then I read a review of a Maxtor drive that you have to format the drive properly in order to use it with a Mac. So my question is, when a drive is mac and pc compatible, are they necessarily compatible at the same time? or must they be formatted properly to each OS individually? Will I have problems if I copy my files from my PC and try to plug the drive into my iBook?

2) I'm looking to spend under $100, and so far I've looked at two drives with rebates that place them in the $70-80 range: Maxtor OneTouch and Western Digital Dual Option. However, I've heard customer reviews that these drives have been failing after 4-6 months, which is concerning if I want to use the hard drive for backup purposes. It's also surprising because I thought Maxtor and Western Digital were some of the best and most reliable hard drive manufacturers. What are your opinions on this? Is this just a vocal minority, or should I look for other brands?

Thanks in advance for your advice. I'd also welcome any other recommendations and suggestions you may have