Need an external hard drive, advice?

Hi,
For awhile now I've been wanting an external hard drive but no nothing about them. I have a 160 GB 17" iMac 2GHz and I'm always running out of space. Right now I have 20GB free.
Anywho the big question is USB or Firewire? Now, I can get USB ones pretty cheap at a local store here and Future Shop has this 500GB USB one on sale right now.
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10089693&catid=2 3795&logon=&langid=EN
or I could go much bigger and order this 1 TB one online too:
http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10299356&search=externa%20hard%2 0drives&Mo=4&cmre=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-CA&Nr=P_CatalogName:BCCA&Sp=S&N=0&wh se=BCCA&Dx=modematchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=PCatalogName:BCCA&Ne=4000000&D=externa%20hard%20drives&Ntt=externa%20hard%20drive s&No=0&Ntx=modematchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
I"ve been told that Firewire is great for things like using iMovie or if you use your video camera for videos etc.
Down the road I want a video camera and may use iMovie more in the future. So how important is Firewire and how big should I go? I'm thinking bigger is better and know I need at least 500GB as I want to back up my whole system and have room for movies, TV shows etc. Also want something that isn't too loud.
Here are two other Canadian stores I've looked at briefly to see what they have,
http://www.tigerdirect.ca and http://www.canadacomputers.com
Any advice would be appreciated,
S.

There are dozens of posts that say basically this:
Bought a MyBook. (USB or FW) - it won't work anymore, period.
After you see 8 or 10 of those you take the MyBook off the list. If all it is, is a backup to a reliable drive then the risk is you lose the drive and need to buy a better one and redo the backups. I would not use a drive with a known failure problem as a backup ever. Certainly not the only media drive on my system.
The LaCie D2 cases do not use fans and I have 4TB of them working for years so that is not the reason the MyBooks fail - they fail because they are not well made. The LaCie cases are about 6 pounds of cast aluminum so they act as huge heat sinks. Even then I use a small desktop fan to blow air over them so they stay cooler.
I suspect the WD bridges are poor and the interface between the drive and the USB/FW port becomes unusable. This is why I don't buy the $10 Tiger Direct cases and put good quality drives in them . Rotten bridges.
One reason to buy them is if the sale price becomes cheaper than the raw drive price then you can open the case and get a new drive for less than buying one but then you wind up with a lot of trash.
Get a LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Message was edited by: Cannibals

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