Hyde01

Hey! As the title mentions I'm going to be buying an external hard drive and want to ask if there is anything I have to know when using external hdd or is it really just plug-and-play? I know some people have to reformat their hdd depending on what OS they're using. Also, any suggestions on hdd's I should look into?

I did some research here on the forum and people say Seagate and Western Digital are the manufacturers to go with in terms of hard drives. But after reading reviews on some of Seagate's 1.5TB external hard drives off of Newegg, it seems it has a high failure rate and a lot of people are unhappy with it. Maybe that's just a problem with their higher storage hard drives, because some reviews say their 320/500GB ones last forever. What are your guy's input? I'm probably going to try and stick with WD though

Specs I'm looking for:

• I want to keep it under $150
• As much storage as I can get within the aforementioned budget (I don't want to buy another hdd for a loooong time )
  • 1.5TB is what I'm looking at right now

The hard drive is going to be used for loads of music, anime, movies, misc. shows, photos, ect. Now will I have any problems playing movies on my computer through an External HDD using USB? I don't really have a choice on the matter because I'm using a laptop, but just curious

Thanks!

Considering:

WD Elements 1.5TB - $130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136450

SAMSUNG STORY Station 1.5TB - $130 (not WD, but has a lot of good reviews)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152179

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My Laptop:
Dell Studio 17" - Jet Black
PROCESSOR: Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache)
VIDEO CARD: 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3650
MEMORY: 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2
HARD DRIVE: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)