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I am looking to buy an external hard drive to back up the files on my computer and provide additional storage for music and pictures that I will continue to acquire.  My computer has 64.4 GB of usable hard drive space and I only have 11 GB left on that.  I realize that I will not need an external hard drive for a little while as I still have some space to work with.  However, I just got a camera for Christmas with a 2 GB memory card, and I will definitely be taking alot of pictures from now on.  Therefore, my question for all you people who know your stuff is: how large of an external hard drive should I look into getting and what brands and price ranges should I look to pay?

If I do not buy an external hard drive soon I will backup my files on my computer through DVD-Rs or CD-Rs as I have not done that before and I know that I really need to.

Thanks,
Kirk

I've usd MyBooks to back up data (songs, pictures, videos, etc) and been pretty happy with them. 

There are a lot of differnt models out there depending on how you want to connect to your computer.  USB is the simplest, most common and also the slowest.  If your computer has a firewire connection or eSata connection that would make for faster data transfer but will also cost you a little more.

You should be able to find a 500 GB MyBook for a pretty reasonable price.  It doesn't sound like you need that much space right now but given enough time I'm sure you'll fill it up.

Heheheh.... *has a 1tb hard drive in his computer*

 

I have a FreeAgent and I can't complain. Gabe's response is pretty typical of people I know that have used a MyBook or two. I would second everyone else's suggestion and go with a 1TB.

Western Digital is absolutely the only way to go for large external storage drives. However, make sure you get the Studio Edition and use FireWire 800 to transfer stuff, or you'll have the problem that sk had with transfer speeds. Also, I would invest in a terabyte model; they may be more expensive, but they won't become obsolete as soon.

Also, if you're going to be doing any video editing or other intensive data work, I would recommend the Studio Edition II (mostly because it's a RAID drive and thus can manage much faster transfer speeds in and out of the drive, especially useful when you're rendering data that's stored on the external from within the computer):
http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410

id recommend only a 500g one for now. hey are cheap and can be found almost anywhere. my family got my mom one thats 500g for chrismas and we backed up my ocmp, her comp, and havent done are dads yet and we basicly copyed the ENTIRE harddrives and we still have over 350 gigs left. i have a 250 gig and im down to 30 or so gigs left ><. yeah i torrent vids and movies and stuff that we own on dvd already but i dont have a dvd drive so i have to download to watch on my comp since they are always watching tv and my dvd/vcr combo is broken.

go with something small for now. theres always the option of buying a high-end enclosure then buying a harddrive seperate for a great deal. try newegg.com. ive bought my entire comp setup from them and had only one problem so far and that was me being stupid and not having the right motherboard driver to use ><. nothing from them has been dead on arrival like some people get and they replace it for free if it does come doa.

find something small and cheap as you will find backing up all you have and then for months you wont be able to fill the drive easily.