External HDD Suggestions?

[Rule G]

I'm going to buy Acronis TI for backing up my 2 machines. I'd like to get a 500GB USB external drive to use. I see that NAS drives are pricey....I don't need a print server but do want to be able to backup 2 different computers over my home LAN. Suggestions are welcome.
Thanks

[aggronix]

In our company we have best experiences with a WD Netcenter Harddisk which we use since 10 month or so. Where we have a free LAN port we use this HD. We connect it with a crossover UTP CAT5 cable to the pc's lan port.

The netcenter HD can be configured with your browser. We have different shares on it and they are password protected. The device has additional usb ports to connect a printer (so it can work as a network print server) or you can connect additional usb HDs. But we haven't tried this option yet.

It is configured as a workgroup member and TI shows this workgroup in the drive list on the left side.

The only annoyance is you have to start the netcenter HD at least 5 minutes (better 10) before you boot with your acronis rescue media. If you are not patient enough, the workgroup isn't foundand you have to boot again a few minutes later. I don't know whether this delay is a problem of TI or the HD - I can live with that.

hope it helps. aggronix.

[memnoch]

I bought a Buffalo Linkstation 500GB recently and it works very well. Supports Gigabit Jumbo Frames up to 9K too. I'm not getting the same transfer speeds as some reviews have mentioned but I get best results from FTPing to it. I was doing some test transfers of ISO images and FTP worked nearly 3 times faster so should be fine for TI.