I’ve always had good Lacie hardrives. They can sometimes be a little more expensive but they are worth it.

Another good brand is Maxtor, and their one-button back up drives are sweet if you are looking for a backup solution.

As far as the drive that is actually in the hard drive my opinion is it doesn’t matter too much. Sure people are always going to argue over which is betters, western digital, seagate, ibm, etc, but I think they are pretty much the same.

As for OWC, they are a great company (and sponsor of this site!) in terms of their selection, customer service, and pricing.

Good luck!

I have a western digital that usb 2/firewire and i love it

get an enclosure, then you can buy any hard drive you want to, or multiple ones for different purposes.

maxtor drives are great.

I vote for build your own. Newegg has several enclosures to choose from starting at around $30, then you can just add your favorite brand of HD.

Firstly there are only a few actual manufacturers of the hard drives themselves. I only buy Seagate and Western Digital drives for my own installations in enclosures. The Barracuda and the Caviar are the two models to look for. In the CoMUG forums, it has been said to try to avoid both Hatichi/IBM and Maxtor.

You might find this difficult to believe but I have way more FireWire drives than three average Mac users combined, maybe more. So, I do have some good info about this subject. One thing to know is that you must be careful with it, for once you really start daisy chaining it, it becomes a risk factor in that you must remember to never break the “rules” of using FireWire. Otherwise you can lose a drive, either the drive itself or the FireWire bridge. And I have done both!

If you are going to buy a pre assembled external FW drive, I REALLY recommend to look for these two things:
1) an external FW device MUST have TWO FireWire ports minimum! Do NOT buy any external drive that has only one FW port. What is really nice is either 2 FW 800 and 1 FW 400 ports or vice versa.

2) You really ought to have an external drive that has USB2 also!!! You have no idea how this can save your bacon! (You could lose the FW bridge and still get to your data via USB or vise versa) (You have to bring a hard drive to someone who only has USB.

If you want to put 1) & 2) together nicely, then I truly recommend you buy a LaCie Triple Interface drive. They now have 2 FW 800, 1 FW 400, and 1 UBS2 ports. Though LaCie does not make the hard drives, this is the best company to package hard drives. And they have been in the Mac World for a long time.

OK, at my home now I have four 1 TBs triple interface LaCie drives, five 500 GBs triple interface LaCie drives, two 250 GBs Western Digital Caviar drives in enclosures, two 120 GBs drives (1 WD in an enclosure and one from MicroNet and a brand new 400 GBs Seagate Barracuda in a groovy enclosure all daisy chained to my PowerBook. And across the room I have a Mac Mini 80 GBs sitting on top of a NewerTech miniStack with a Seagate 400 GBs Barracuda that I installed, connected to a Seagate 160 GB Barracuda in a groovy enclosure AND a 300 GBs Seagate Barracuda in an USB2 enclosure.

As far as your first enclosure for any Mini, there is no question, the NewerTech miniStack is the slickest set up for a Mini out there. The Mini’s have a 4200 RPM drive and the drive that you put in the empty miniStack will certainly be 7200 RPM. The features with the miniStack make it so that turning it into the startup disk is no problem. And when running off of this faster drive, some apps and such will run a little better

Now if you want to build your own and don’t want to fit it under the Mini, then the Metal Gear Box is the way to go!!! By far the easiest enclosure to get in and out off. All metal enclosure with plenty of venting holes makes for good cooling without needing a fan. Dual FW and USB2 available. Groovy cool lights. Available in White, Black and Aluminum.  http://www.techimo.com/articles/i82.html

I think this is where you will find the best deal on the dual interface models.
http://www.supergooddeal.com/product_p/mgbu2f-bk.htm
I have four of these enclosures and the first two were twice as much as the second two. Do your shopping because there are many other companies now using this same box as theirs and putting in whatever drive. This enclosure would be a great one for the first timer to use too! One small Phillips screwdriver needed.

And it is easy enough to buy the hard drive of your choice yourself and install it. Just make sure you are buying a good quality drive and not the low end model. If you buy a new Seagate Barracuda or a Western Digital Caviar now, they are offering FIVE YEAR warranties! And those are the brands that I can personally recommend.

Also be sure of the source you are buying from, of course. And finally make sure you buy the correct type of drive, which can be a little confusing. Part of the confusion is because everyone does not speak the same lingo. Two different online stores can have the same drive listed differently.

You DO NOT want to buy a Serial or SATA interface drive.

What you want is called either IDE or ATA/100 or ATA/100 - IDE. If you get one of those drives they will easily pop into the Metal Gear Box. These drives have only two connections to make. Just be careful and gentle. Do not be in a hurry. Have a well lit table/bench with plenty of working space. Have a special little bowl that you can get your fingers/long nosed pliers into to hold all of the screws you have to deal with.

And then once you get tired one buying these darn single drive enclosures, because you just got to get more and more and even more hard drive space, then you migrate to this:

http://stores.ebay.com/Superldg-Store_FIREWIRE-USB-ENCLOSURES-CASES

If you sift through all of the stuff, there is usually a four bay enclosure available for $125.00 or less and 8 and 9 bay ones for under $300.00! These are really cool, as one can really take avantage of RAID features and to have extra drive tray to add in/swap out drives.

When I am setting up other people’s system’s, then I recommend they buy LaCie. Or if they want to do it themselves, you have now heard my recommendations on that too.

BTW, usually the best deals for LaCie drives is ZipZoomFly.com

I think this should help to answer your questions some.

Rgator

yeah, I know, the Gators sure got beat bad this Saturday!

I guess that I say this because in all of my shopping around for drives and enclosures, I have not found any enclosures that are Serial - SATA. If there are those available too, then I must say to be careful to buy a drive and enclosure that matches.

Nedrick, it’s not really building your own hard drive, you’ll just be taking an internal hard drive and slapping it into an enclosure. It’s not complicated, and it’s much more flexible and inexpensive than buying a pre-built external hard drive (which is basically the same exact thing, just taking it a small step forward).

Why pay an extra $100-$200 when you can do that extra step yourself, plus leave yourself with expandability options…