[sfgiantsfan]

does anybody have any recommendations on an inexpensive yet reliable external hard drive? i would want to go at least 100gb (i think). i always see ads for brands like iomega and others for very cheap - are these any good? (also it must be firewire, because a lot of cheap ones probably have usb only).

[SpaceMonkey]

The cheapest would be something that you assemble yourself by buying a bare hard drive and an external firewire case. Buying the case can sometimes be an iffy proposition, however, as different cases use different firewire bridges (the adapter between the hard drive's IDE connection and the case's firewire connection), and some bridges have proven to be more unreliable than others. Also, not all external cases have power switches, which is important for some. As for pre-assembled drives, I think the OWC Neptune line is a pretty reasonable deal.