External hard drives?

[donutsweeper]

Appealing to my flist for information here :)

I know next to nothing about computers. I would like to get an external hard drive or a zip drive or something that I can back up my files with. I would be backing up word docs, photos and a bunch of .avi files (tv shows and movies). Anyone have any suggestions as to what device would work best for this? Any info- like what brands are good or which ones should be avoided or what storage size is ideal would be appreciated.

Comments

[pointytilly.livejournal.com]

That "great feature" is just really hard to kill bloatware if you don't want it, though. Took me forever to actually remove (not disable) it, and I'm still not sure if it worked because the drive with it has slightly less space :/.

My MyPassport also refuses to spin down properly unless I mess with it in a drive manager thing or do it manually via the command line. Having a hard drive that I have to hold in my hand and make sure is not still spinning before I unplug it = not fun!

My older Western Digital's worked nicely, though. No complaint, no failure ever other than a minor filesystem wobble when it lost power (easily fixed with the Linux answer to checkdisky tools). And it has a pretty blue light.