External hard drive advice
 

What should I be looking for in the 100 GB range? Any specifics? Any brands to avoid?

TIA

I avoid...
 

Samsung and western Digital. Both seem to fail more easily above 10gb point. Your milage may vary though.
Maxtor is always a good bet though...

This might help me too... not to thread jack at all but does anyone know if external hard drives are accesible over a network?

(windows xp)
My current internal hard drives are by western digital... I've never tried external but I love their drives so far

If the PCs you're using to access the hard drive over the network are ALSO XP, then it will probably work. Sharing with XP and other OSes can be trickier. It depends on the setup, but most times your XP machine should just see it as another hard drive to be shared.

To answer the original question I have also heard bad things about Samsung, but I believe Seagate has come out with a 100 GB drive and I always liked them, Maxtor is also good though.