reliable and portable external harddrive?

[g1tigi]

I had a seagate external HD that just died, lo and behold, right after its warranty expired. Thankfully I had a partial backup of the files, but I'm still a bit irked. So I need to buy a new external HD and, given my recent poor experience with seagate, I'm hesitant to go with them again.

Mind you, I have a friend who bought the same model a year later, and his HD just died as well. He wasn't as lucky to have a backup.

The HD was one of these: http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2005/07/12/small_or_smaller/seagate-box.jpg

So my question is, what's a good portable external hard drive that is reliable? Seagate FreeAgent? WD passport? Fujistu? Iomega? Maxtor? The drive is used for backing up my laptop/storing files that don't fit on my laptop, so it's essential that it, well, doesn't die.

Obviously something like a raid 1 would be the safest bet...but that unfortunately isn't an option at the moment.

 

[Joe Average]

Depends on what your needs/requirements are. A lot of people just go buy a 3.5" external drive case someplace and then put whatever hard drive they want in one, or a 2.5" external if you have a drive for that.

Seagate is the only brand of hard drive that's never failed on me yet for decades, so... I hope that doesn't change anytime soon but I'm well aware that I'm a rare case that's never had one crap out.

/me knocks on wood...