External HD novice needs advice

Hey folks,
I have a PowerPC iBook G4 from around 2005 or so. I am planning to buy a new MacBook, but want to keep my iBook as a backup. It has all my iTunes and iPhoto items on it, as well as a number of other files I don't want to lose to a HD crash.
My question: i want to get an external HD to preserve my files, pics, etc. instead of losing them all to a HD crash. I don't know the first thing about external HD's. I'm not even sure what one would look like. I have seen discussions about some external HD's themselves being unreliable and they aren't all Mac-compatible and it has me nervous.
Could some kind soul make a recommendation about a good reliable external HD to back up my iBook? I've seen something about cloning, but I don't know what that is or if I want to do it. I do not seem to have the install disks for the OS. If they came with my iBook, I don't know where they went. Can anyone point me to a previous discussion about how to back up or clone my hard drive or whatever I need to do?
I am completely clueless, so any helpful advice would be enormously appreciated.

You're welcome!
Let me add a little bit more for you to think about, and do feel free to post back with any further questions once you've done some research.
Many drives come formatted for PC's running Windows rather than for Macs. You can reformat the drives for Macs using Disk Utility.
You can use a single external drive for more than one computer, but you will need to partition it so that there is a separate partition for each computer. If you also want to use Time Machine to back up your new MacBook, then there should be a separate partition for that.
There is another factor to consider if you want to make a bootable clone for both the iBook and the MacBook. The iBook uses a partition scheme called the Apple Partition Map, and the MacBook will use the GUID Partition Table. The external drive has to be formatted with one partition scheme or the other. So if you want your clones to be bootable, then you will want to get two external firewire drives and format one for the iBook (Apple Partition Map) and the other for the MacBook (GUID Partition Table).
In terms of size, the bootable clone can be the same size as the internal drive. So if your iBook has a 120 GB drive, you could use a 120 GB external drive to back it up with a bootable clone. If you decided to buy a 250 GB drive, you could partition it and use half for the bootable clone and the other half for something like large media files or other storage.
Good places to comparison shop for drives are Newegg and OWC, as both frequently have specials, as do Office Supply places. I personally like Western Digital and Seagate drives. For backup I have 3. They are all WD notebook drives in OWC's firewire Mercury on the Go enclosures, all of which have the very reliable Oxford chip sets. One drive is for the iBook, one is for the MBP, and the third is a redundant clone and archive.
Since your immediate need is for the iBook, a good strategy would be to get a drive suitable for the iBook clone and get your data backed up ASAP. When you actually get the MacBook, you can think about a drive for it.
Good luck!

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