Over in Oz for a year and only able to use a crappy 3G dongle for interweb, so the prospect of constantly uploading at slow speeds to flickr to backup my pics is well, slow and expensive.

can anyone suggest a decent external drive around the 300gb mark that will still be working in a year when i get back to blighty. are western digi still making decent drives? or all they all much of a muchness now? doesnt need to be blindingly fast, just reliable and able to take the odd knock or two.

just reliable and able to take the odd knock or two.

I dont think there is such HDD based device in existance !!

Take a look at the WD MyBook, they are OK

HP SimpleSave – 320gb, portable (no power except USB) and £50ish at Tesco.

I picked up a Western Digitial 1TB one for £50 in Currys the other day. Impressed so far.

Fast, reliable and rubber bumpers on it as well.

Lacie rugged harddrive?

I got a seagate 1TB External off of maplins for about that a few weeks ago.
Took a little while to copy all the crap across but seemed good enough.
No idea how strong it is.
Only other option is stock up on high volume memory cards, but that will cost a bomb