Budget external hard drives?

[DontSayBanana]

Looking for something in the vicinity of 60-80 GB, will likely hold the data for a full year without corruption issues... and under $100.  Certain graphic design professors have insisted on multiple save destinations, one of which should be an external hard drive, rather than just a couple different USB keys.

I know you can get something in that capacity range for under $100, but I'm a little worried about the reliability of the cheapie-cheap externals; should I just push S to go for the $100 range and be firm about it?

[BuddhaRhubarb]

a friend of mine has one of those "desk agent" ones that was about 100 and says it works really well. and is durable.

[PRC]

Quality of external HD I have found to be very cheap regardless of brand.  Pay $100.00 and expect to get 3 years max out of it.  Thus, buy another one in 2.5 years as extra extra backup.

[Josquius]

All of a sudden I feel very worried about my exteranl HD

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I'd get this.  Then you can put whatever drive you want in it, and if the case fails you simply move the drive to another case or your main box.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Certain graphic design professors have insisted on multiple save destinations, one of which should be an external hard drive, rather than just a couple different USB keys.

BTW, what the hell is this all about?

[DontSayBanana]

BTW, what the hell is this all about?

My girlfriend's asked for help in picking an external hard drive because one of her professors is being extremely anal-retentive about data backup and redundancy.  This professor wants every file saved in at least two places, and at least one should be an external hard drive (it was specifically said not to use a high-cap flash drive, which annoys me because I find they fail less than external HDDs).

For my purposes, I use two: one is an older Maxtor tanker that's withstood everything I could throw at it.  The other is the HDD I scavenged from my last laptop in a USB enclosure, which is really a third option for me (having S buy a 3.5" HDD and me rigging it up in an enclosure), but I think S is a little leery of that path.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

I've had my 120GB IO Data ext (firewire, or usb2) for 6 years and counting. Never had (knocks on laminated pressboard sort of wood desk) nary an issue that wasn't my fault. It's Ninja quiet and fast! My Maxtor 300gb I've had two years. no hiccups

[Caliga]

My girlfriend's asked for help in picking an external hard drive because one of her professors is being extremely anal-retentive about data backup and redundancy.  This professor wants every file saved in at least two places, and at least one should be an external hard drive (it was specifically said not to use a high-cap flash drive, which annoys me because I find they fail less than external HDDs).

Tell this busybody professor that it's none of their damn business how and if she backs her shit up.  Alternately, tell her to lie about backing it up and then don't bother to do so.

[DontSayBanana]

Tell this busybody professor that it's none of their damn business how and if she backs her shit up.  Alternately, tell her to lie about backing it up and then don't bother to do so.

Yeah, Cal, that's gonna work when the professor's collecting the backups.

Anyway, anybody got experience with this external: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136227 ?