Portable HDD recommendations

Mr_Rose

OK, so with the release of the new Sandy Bridge processors imminent, I've decided it's finally time to upgrade my old C2D box.

But before I do that I want to back up all my old shit to a new disc instead of the one I've been using for the last six years or so, so I'm looking for personal recommendations regarding portable drives and the interfaces that make them work. I'm also willing to entertain notions of a NAS-type permanent backup/storage solution.
The only real problem is that I'm in the UK so Newegg won't have anything to do with me but if you can supply model numbers I can find prices so don't worry too much about it.

PolloDiablo

Honestly, in my experience portable hard drives are all basically the same.

I've had a couple of varying sizes from Seagate and Western Digital. I prefer Seagate, just because they tend to be a little cheaper for their sizes. I haven't had any fail on me, so they've been pretty reliable, and I've had one for five years or so. I prefer ones that can draw power over USB than the ones with a separate AC adapter, since that's a pain in the ass.

I picked up a new one over the weekend that's been fine. A Seagate GoFlex, 500GB. It supports USB 3.0, but my computer doesn't, so that didn't really interest me. It's got a lot of room, it's tiny, and it was relatively cheap, I think it was $60.

Spam

Its a shame you didnt decide to grab one a week ago - a lot of the high street stores like PC World and Comet were doing cracking deals on portable HDDs (and NAS boxes) because of both the Jan Sales and the VAT rate about to go up - now that VAT is up to 20% a lot of the bargains aint so great any more.

Saying that though you can still pick up some pretty good deals - the Western Digital Elements 2.5" (make sure you get 2.5" and not 3.5") USB hard drives are sitting at about £40 for 320GB, £50 for 500GB and most other brands are about the same price range. Brand doesn't make that much of a difference to be honest, so go for price per gig and portability/robustness.

If you are after something larger than that, you pretty much need to got for a 3.5" Drive unless you feel like spending big bucks. In that case, I would most definately look at NAS Drives - the price of them has come down drastically over the last couple of years, and they give you the huge advantage of being accessible to any PC / console (most NAS boxes support DLNA now so you can stream media from them to a xbox/ps3 fine) on your network (wirelessly if you hook it up to a wireless router).

I picked up a 1TB Western Digital My Book World NAS for myself and one for my parents just after the New Year for £90 each. The price of them is up to £100ish now, but it's still a cracking deal, or there are alternatives like a Buffalo Linkstation for £95ish.