Guys what brand do you recommend for an external USB hard drive 250 to 500 GB. Iâm after reliability. Thanks
depending on how much you want to spend and if you plan on needing more space in the future, the most reliable would be a external raid enclosure similar to something produced by www.drobo.com or www.buffalotech.com However, we are then talking between $350-1000 for the enclosure and then you have to purchase the drives that go in it as well (most will use whatever regular drives you want to purchase). edit - fixed links
Don't buy an external hard drive... better to buy a "hard drive enclosure". That way, if either the box electronics or the drive goes bad, you can replace for not much money. (I once had a SimpleTech external drive which died.... about 2 months out of warranty... (Bummer!) I literally had to break the box to get to the hard drive. I put the drive into an external enclosure, and all was OK. The external enclosure has more features, too.) You needn't spend more than $50 on a hard drive enclosure. Check Newegg reviews for one with a high rating.
In the inexpensive, home use category, Western Digital has an extensive line of reliable USB disk drives.
IMHO roll your own. Get an external hard drive case and insert a hard drive of your choice into the case. Icy Dock "mobile usb" cases: http://www.icydock.com/usb.html Buy a major-brand (Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, etc.) hard drive and put it in the case. Your best HD's are marketed as "enterprise" models. IMHO this is a better approach than buying an off-the-shelf external HD because if it's already assembled you don't have any control over what make and model of HD is in there.
If you're really after reliability WD just came out with a RAID 1 (mirroring) box. For more capacity check any of the NAS boxes from Thecus etc, all with RAID.