[Fyron]

The workmanship from Seagate, Maxtor (now part of Seagate), Western Digital, Hitachi, and the few others that make drives is more or less identical. Which one is cheaper for you is largely dependent on which price levels the retailers have decided to sell them.

External hdds are a huge waste of money; its exactly the same hardware as an internal drive, just with different casing. They usually cost 1.5-2x as much... A cheap $20 aluminum enclosure will turn any internal drive into an external one. They go on sale rather frequently.. Just don't buy the ones that are cheap plastic enclosures; the slim, fanless aluminum ones that hug the drive and act as a heat sink are all you need.