I use Mybooks.. never had a single issue, been using for over a year.

I have a 500 gb Freeagent - it's a POS, overheats within minutes, ventilation is on the bottom.....geniuses at Seagate don't know that heat rises. It's in a drawer.....

I have 2 MyBooks (500gb) and 2 Maxtors (200gb & 100gb) and a 400gb Passport

The Maxtors are older (aluminum cases) but work great. I use them mainly for photography storage.

The MyBooks are newer (one I got in December) but they work great also. They are strictly for backups.

The Passport I keep with my laptop and it contains duplicates of my music & photos as well as backups of downloaded installation programs I've bought or collected.

Recommendation is MyBook using esata but not if portability is important. While they are external, they are really not meant to be lugged around.....for that you need a 2.5" like the Passport

or

instead of a new external case just get a hot swap box on esata like this Newegg

If cost is not an object - I would go with a san setup.  I used to have lots of external drives from all makers and models but I noticed that I was replacing these drives a lot.

I purchased a couple of Drobo's last year and I could not be happier.  

For the Cost of the case, you can add drives of any speed and brand as you choose to grow the system.  You also don't have to worry about losing data in the long run.  Check it out.  

How much do you want for the Freeagent? I always wanted somthing like that

Maxtor or Western Digital....Huge and cheap. You aren't talking Laptop/portability, are you? If the latter, I'd opt for a small Western Digital or Maxtor One Touch...and keep the large/small ones same brand for driver update ease.

Back to the snow shoveling.

Thanks for all the great advice. When I said portable, I meant being able to move it around if necessary but not portable like my WD passport. I just don't want hard drives inside a PC.

I will probably go with the My Book, I would like the network version but seems a bit expensive for me.

The Drobo is the coolest storage concept I have ever seen but a bit outof my price league for now. I will however consider it for future replacements.

BTW, what does POS mean?

I always buy Iomega with Firewire connection.

I have only good experiences with Iomega, and they look nice. Firewire is a lot faster than USB 2. On paper the speed is roughly the same, but in reality Firewire appears not to block the CPU like USB does.

All my external hard disks have Firewire and USB 2 connectors.

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MyBooks.

Firewire 800 is faster than USB, but is usually found on MAC's 

Firewire 400 isn't. ESATA blows them all away. Newer PC's include ESATA or you can get an ESATA card pretty cheap.

USB runs about 480Mbps (bits per sec not bytes) that would be 60MB/s actual rates will drop depending on load on the USB hub

Firewire 400 is 400Mbps, that would be 50MB/s doesn't have the hub loading problem that USB does so it probably "seems" faster.

ESATA runs at 300MB/s (that's 2,400Mbps)

I use a MYBOOK 500gb ESATA ... It's been working great for me.

I always wondered: where does the term "MAC's" come from?

I use the same disks with Firewire 400 and occasionally USB 2. Firewire 400 is definitely faster.

MacIntosh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Macintosh_computers

that's where it comes from ....I use it to refer to anything Apple

It's likely your USB hub has more than one connection. Firewire is faster on my system too.

I forgot to mention, while all these other connects are faster, I will be depending on USB because I plan on using this drive to watch movies on my TV, am considering that Western Digital TV HD Media Player to go with it.

BTW, a question. Is it possible to have a hard drive connected thru both a usb and an ethernet at the same time? Just wondering.

Yes, but why the acronym "MAC"?

Same for direct connections (I don't use a hub for disks).