Needs to be at least 500GB, USB.

Seagate do a 1TB for £84 which would be big enough for now. Are they reliable though?

freecom toughdrive, not sure how big they do them but mine has taken some serious abuse, this assumes you want it portable

Yes portable – its going abroad

mines been on the road for 2 years with me, dropped, crushed and generaly abused, not had any problems yet

oh and if it is important then carry two smaller ones not one big one

thats what I was wondering? all my eggs in one basket and all that 😉

You might not have noticed but there are two types of drive, one uses a 2"ish HDD and the other a 3"ish HDD.

The smaller 2" systems tend to be marketed as portable, are much smaller, often include shock protection and go up to a 500G max. Usually they can be powered off the USB port.

The larger 3" systems have higher capacities well over 500G but usually need an external PSU and are physically much larger.

So check the physical size. Lacie make nice looking stuff.

I've got a Freecom 250Gb toughdrive, had it about 2 years I'm sure you can get higher cap ones now. Has a laptop size disk inside, nice compact tough little unit, goes in a shirt pocket, built in lead and powered by the USB so there's no brick to carry round with it. Lights up a really cool blue colour when its working too.

I'd rather carry two of these than one of the bigger ones

I'd carry three, just to be on the safe side.

and bury a fourth one in the back garden just to be really sure

i like the western digital mybook range.

I have bought three Wester Digital MybookWorld 1TB drives and all have had problems. I would recommend Buffalo, Seagate and Freecom.

i've got a usb 500gb freecom, its been fine, however i'm running out of space now and really want to get a 1tb drive with networking, something from buffalo probably.
Then i can network the drive by pluging it into my wireless router and then still have my laptop wireless but still be able to access the drive without cables dangling around.

If I needed portable external drives I'd look at SSDs
Not cheap though

Anyone recommend a cheapish external drive that is firewire 800 compatible and doesnt need to be plugged into a wall socket? like the lacie rugged one, but its a tad expensive.

dobo – I have a brand new (still in box and plastic) Buffalo Link Station Live. It is 1TB and will plug straight into your router. Mail me if you would like it – Shakey.

I got a Buffalo 500gb one last week , won it in a raffle 😀 Seems good, end of the day it's just a HDD.

One thing to take into consideration is that most vendors "manufacturing" external HDD's are only creating the enclosure, and buying a disk from where ever. If you want to be kind of sure you know what you are getting, then buy an external disk from one of the companies who also manufacture actual HDD's – that's WD, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung etc.

I'm not really able to recommend anything. WD seems to make very reliable internal disks, as I have only seen one out of about 400 fail during the last 3 years (compare with 30%-half the Maxtor prior to that). However I have 3 external WD drives at home, one has a really whiney power supply and another died a few days ago…