Outboard Hard-drives; any of them the best? iTunes nearly lost!

[hornucopia]

My iTunes are stored on an Iomega hard-drive, which is getting VERY slow and I'm advised it will fail soon! So; need another (TWO-will back-up!!) hard-drives to store iTunes.
Are there any top quality hard-drives, or are they all much the same?
Will transfer the iomega contents, and hopefully breathe again!
My other one (Time Machine) is a LACIE.

Computer is a Mac.

Thanks in advance.
Chris
:doh:

[Ali Tait]

I use a Drobo, which removes the problem of failing drives as any of the four can be hot swapped with no loss of data. They're not cheap but you can pick up a secondhand one on the bay.

[Jac Hawk]

I always thought HDD's got slower the more you put on em, if you had say 100 songs on yer 100 gig HDD and you wanted to play one, it would find the song quickly, but if you have 100,000 songs it would take longer to search through the data. anyway if i was you i would try one of these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IDE-SATA-HDD-Hard-Disk-Drive-USB-Dock-Docking-Station-/150555275955?pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosure s_RL&hash=item230dcb32b3, then go for a good quality HDD, personally i've used seagates for ages without any problems.

[WAD62]

I always thought HDD's got slower the more you put on em, if you had say 100 songs on yer 100 gig HDD and you wanted to play one, it would find the song quickly, but if you have 100,000 songs it would take longer to search through the data. anyway if i was you i would try one of these http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IDE-SATA-HDD-Hard-Disk-Drive-USB-Dock-Docking-Station-/150555275955?pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosure s_RL&hash=item230dcb32b3, then go for a good quality HDD, personally i've used seagates for ages without any problems.

No it doesn't work like that, it's not a sequential search, the term DASD is direct access storage device, so you are indexed directly to the file, regardless of the data quantity on the disk.

What will slow things down is fragmentation, but that shouldn't be an issue unless you've been adding and deleting... i.e very volatile activity, or you are getting too full i.e. over 70% approx

The docking stations are good for backup purposes, but I wouldn't use one as my main source, go for a caddy and a good quality 3.5" internal drive

http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/products.aspx?cat=33&subcat=339&brand=136&page=2

..these guys are also very cheap for HD's

[hornucopia]

"and a good quality 3.5" internal drive "

What? On a Mac? Is that possible?
Is a Caddy just a collection of hard-drives?

Like the 'Icy Box' name! seems cheap!

Apologies for being old and out of loop!

[WAD62]

"and a good quality 3.5" internal drive "

What? On a Mac? Is that possible?
Is a Caddy just a collection of hard-drives?

Like the 'Icy Box' name! seems cheap!

Apologies for being old and out of loop!

No problem mate, I've got several Icy Box 'Caddies' (just a SATA container for an HD with power and USB/ESATA connectors etc), they work well, and it allows you to use a good quality HD, rather than the cheapo ones that are used in the pre built external HD's.

With regard to apple and the HD format, I presume you can format the drive to whatever file system works best with Macs...this is where my knowledge runs out, as I'm a Microsoft user, but FAT32 would be fine for both Macs and Windows.

Anyone know what the optimum file system for external Mac HD's is?