External Hard Drive w/ Firewire

Hello all,
I am quickly running out of space on my laptop (due in large part to all of my music) so I am looking for suggestions regarding an external hard drive-- one with Firewire, preferably-- onto which I can move much of my collection. 15 of my total 20 GB of storage space is just music, most of which I don't listen to on a regular basis. Moving some of that off my laptop would allow me to FINALLY install the copy of OSX Tiger I purchased last June!
I have another question: is there a difference between "desktop" external hard drives versus "mobile/portable" external hard drives (other than that the latter does not require AC power)? In specific, is there some reason why I could not use a "desktop" one (i.e. things need to be wired in somehow or something else that prevents me from doing so)? See, since I have an iBook, I have a slight impetus to purchase a portable drive that I can travel wtih easily so I can always have access to my various files and whatnot, though usually my laptop remains on my desk and I don't have to have access to everything all at once if that means I can get more storage for less money. Based on what research I've done, "portable" drives only go up to about 100 GB and those are comparable in price to "desktop" ones at 250 GB.
At the bare minimum, I'm looking for a 40 GB external hard drive with Firewire, though an upper limit would probably be 250 GB, so I don't totally break the bank. I'm looking for something that will last me awhile, space-wise, and I've ripped all of the CDs I currently own so essentially I won't be coming into piles and piles of music files all at once ever again.
Thanks for any suggestions or help you can offer!

Shawn
desktop computers use 3.5" hard drives
laptop computers use 2.5" hard drives
if you have an iBook, then you can bus power a 2.5" drive enclosure from your computer and do not need a separate power source for the enclosure, but you should keep your iBook plugged in so you do not run the battery down on the computer
the largest 2.5" drive is 120GB and 2.5" drives are more expensive than 3.5" drives
so now with all of that out of the way, there are lots of enclosures and drives you can use - here is a large selection of 2.5" and 3.5" drive enclosures:
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php/cPath/1_22
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/default.php/cPath/1_4

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