My rating: Five Stars
I've touched on the unexpected cost of upgrading to Mac OS 10.5 ("Leopard") in my blog. Even if you're lucky enough not to need to upgrade those expensive applications such as Photoshop, the chances are that you'll want to get a new external hard drive to take advantage of the Time Machine automatic backup function, which is rather good. I know I did.
So it was off to the web to research a decent drive. Many reviews later, I opted for the Western Digital 500GB "My Book" PRO External Hard Drive
» Quiet operation
» Reasonable price
» Firewire interface
This particular drive seemed to tick all the boxes, and it had some pretty good reviews. It looked rather nice too. You'll notice that I didn't mention "reliability", which might be what most people would home in on, but that's because I haven't ever seen any proper A-B testing on different drive models, and I really wouldn't go on the anecdotal evidence of counting up the number of complaints on Amazon. Western Digital have a good name, from what I can see, and that had to be good enough for me. The three criteria above were either things which came with the specification, or (in the case of quiet operation) something I was happy to believe from the online reviews.
So, did I make the right choice? I'll never know, of course. But what I can say is that I'm very happy with the drive. It's not silent (no external drive is), but it's quiet, and not obtrusive. I think I'll probably take it off the desk soon and hide it away on the floor anyway, and I doubt I'll hear it at all then. Don't forget that with Time Machine, the drive fires up every hour to write new backup data. The price was good: most people have it for £120 or so, but Amazon UK is knocking them out for under a hundred pounds, so snap that deal up if you can get it. And it's not only got Firewire, it's got every interface under the sun: Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and USB2.0. That gives you a choice of three ways of connecting it to an iMac, although presumably you'll choose Firewire 800, which zips along.
Build quality seems excellent, and you know this isn't a product built down to a budget, because they provide all the leads you'll possibly need in the box too. That's a good sign, in my opinion. If I get any problems, I'll pop back and mention them here, but in the meantime, I think this is a highly recommended product (and that will, of course, also apply if you're a Windows PC user).
Western Digital 500GB "My Book" PRO External Hard Drive at Amazon UK