External hard drive recommendations?
 

I've got a film production class starting up soon and I'm going to need an external hard drive to save my work. Does anybody have any recommendations for an external firewire(400) drive? It needs to be compatable with Macintosh since it's going to be edited on Final Cut Pro. I'd also like for it to be at least around the $200 range and at least a 160 GB but more if I can get it(200-250GB would be nice). It would be nice if it's quiet too.It also has to be able to fit in a backpack since I'll have to bring it to class. The most important thing is reliability I need something stable.

Don't know much about Macs, but my guess is that you can just buy a regular IDE drive with an external enclosure. Wouldn't be cheaper then buying the external drives.

Grab an enclosure. The Metal Gear boxes are pretty good, and go for ~$59 with both USB and FireWire. They're small, metal, look good, and cool the hard drive like heat sinks instead of adding a fan. (Quiet)

Grab your best deal on a 3.5" drive & put it in.

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=17-155-215&depa=8">$45 at newegg.</a>

I got my 160GB EIDE/ATA for $49 on sale (with rebates) then I added a firewire aluminum case for $40. You still got over a $100 to spare.

i got a western digital external hardrive from ebay for about 120.
its 180 gigs.

I bought a Western Digital 250 GB external Hard drive WDXC2500JBRNN about a year ago and use it with the FireWire interface on my PC. It costs about $250. I use it to store my music collection of about 30,000 MP3 files. It has worked flawlessly and was very easy to set up, just plug it in and go. It is lighted and even looks a little like a jukebox but that is not why I bought it.

I work as a Macintosh tech for a College, I recommend Maxtors firewire drive, solid aluminium case, very reliable. Or if you are a roll your own kind of guy I also own a ADS pyro kit (www.adstech.com), basically an ide to firewire bridge, and pop your own drive in, I just change drives in and out of it, so it has taken a lot of abuse.

Personally I am not a fan of West Dig stuff, have had bad luck with it, that and stay away from fantom external firewire drives, they suck.

I'd also go with an external enclosure. I bought mine from dealsonic. http://www.dealsonic.com/exen.html
i found them to have better prices/selcetion then newegg. I got one of those plumax enclosures.

Lacie is a wicked brand. My dad and brother have 3x120Gb ones that they use for video editing and has never failed them on both Mac's or PC's. LaCie even has an external drive that's one terabyte!

LaCie is very nice--and very expensive.

Like others said, you can build your own with an external enclosure you can buy any number of places. It is by far the most economical solution.