external hard drive recommendation

hey guys, i need a rec on an external HD. i'm learning a new programming language, and booting OS X from the HD, and it needs to be AC powered. anyone have any good or bad experiences with any brands?

i'm gonna be learning ruby on rails, and i'd like to store all my music and graphics software on the hd as well. any suggestions for size? i have about 40g of music, and will be running adobe cs2. how much space should i set aside for all the ruby files, etc.?

thanks in advance.

I'm a little confused by the wording of your post, but I'm guessing you want the ability to boot from the external drive? If so, you'll want to get an external with a Firewire connection. It's much faster than USB and it will be simple to install Mac OS X on it.

If you just want cheap storage, I recently purchased a Western Digital MyBook that was on sale at Best Buy for $70 (160gb) and so far it's worked great.

If you just want cheap storage, I recently purchased a Western Digital MyBook that was on sale at Best Buy for $70 (160gb) and so far it's worked great.

Click to expand...

Does it have firewire? I was thinking of getting one, but the only one I saw with firewire connection was the Pro version which is considerably more expensive.

You could put one together for cheaper and have whatever style case and any size hard drive you want. Its really easy the hard drive just pops into the case with one connector. Just make sure you get a firewire case. They have the stuff at compusa or newegg.com, case wise. Drives you can get just about anywhere these days. Just look around for a deal on the drive then get a case.

I've got an acomdata 320 gb firewire hard drive for $100 at compusa. I haven't had a problem with it.