[pjskelti]

It may work out as dear or cheaper to get a Samsung drive (the only maufacturer doing 3yr warranty now) and a separate FW case. I use such a combo with www.coolerstar.com HDD-337 model. Easy to assemble and disassemble and very quiet. Metal plates (albeit thin gauge) to wick away any heat build up. Mine houses mp3 storage for iTunes on one partition and a whole load of junk that I've accumulated. It's on pretty much constantly and in nearly a year's use, I've not had one ounce of trouble from either product.
Works for me, and a hell of a lot cheaper than a LaCie/Miglia/Wiebtech/etc!

[drmbb]

carolcarol - the hard drives in a firewire enclosure are the same IDE or Parallal ATA drives you would buy for internal installation. So, they should be as reliable as any good quality 3.5" IDE/ATA disk would be (good brands, especially Hitachi and IBM, with their fluid bearings and load/unload technology, have MTBF ratings that measure out in years to decades of normal use). The only caveat would be the enclosure itself, and how well it dissapates heat, protects agains shock (since these drives will be moved around more than an internally mounted disk), and so forth.

[junobear]

OK. I'm late to the party. BUT. Any votes (or thoughts) on Maxtor OneTouch?
The simplicity sounds up my alley. I want to backup both my iBook 900 via FW and my ancient iMac 333 via USB. And I was thinking seriously about the Maxtor One Touch Ext FW/USB 160 G or maybe 200 G. And I seem to recall favorable reviews in Macworld.
Again, the simplicity of just pushing a button and not worrying about volumes etc really grabs me. I do need to backup more than just on CDs!
Thanks!