What external HD?

I need an external HD for my mac. Mainly for backup. Firewire is not that important, neither is write speed.
Thing is, I've had my eye on a couple of makes and models, but I have read some reviews and user opinions and they are less than favourable (loss of data etc...).
I wanted to know what is the best external HD I can get for around £80. I need approx 500GB. These are the three I have been looking at:

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/3344599/Western-Digital-Elements-500GB-USB-2-0-External-Hard-Drive/Product.html

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/953439/Western-Digital-500GB-My-Book-Essential-1U-External-Hard-Drive-USB2-0/Product.html

http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/3337499/Seagate-500GB-FreeAgent-Desktop-3-5-External-USB-2-0-Hard-Drive/Product.html

Can anyone suggest a better alternative?

Those are all fine drives.

Am personally a WD fan, but typically purchase their enterprise class drives.

The Seagate has the better warranty in this case. Have not seen too many using them, while there are a lot of folks using the My Book series of WD drives with their Mac's.

Have learned to take with a grain of salt, individual stories of drive failures. (I will look at industry wide results. There have been some with inordinately high failure rates.) What is certain, is that a percentage of drives from any manufacturer will fail. The last WD I purchased showed up at my house dead. But then the box it shipped in had been dropped from enough height to crush one of the corners.

Never have anything saved on only one drive that you are concerned about losing.

Yup. You can never tell which hard drive is going to fail you and which one will last a lifetime. I've been with WD for the past few years, and so far no failures. Doesn't mean WD is stable, cause at any time all of them will go kaput.

I'd say get an external drive with a nice casing (for dissipating heat and such) and good transfer speeds (you always need those).

Interesting. Thanks guys.
Is there a drive off that list you would recommend, or a totally different one?

out of that list i would go with the WD my book. but that is just my preference.

I agree with Bobtomay. I've had good/bad luck with various brands. Just make sure to go with one of the majors: Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie, etc.

It's a tough choice if you're like me. Took me almost 3 months to research and make a decision on my last drive purchase. I was however, concerned with the speed of both the drive and the connection.

From among those, I would probably go with the WD My Book even though my last purchase was a Seagate 750GB (and which I've had no issues with whatsoever). There have been a few individual posts about their My Book drive failing, but among the great numbers of people that appear to be using them, it seems that most really like that series of drives.

You might also just consider which would look best in your environment.