[diamond-optic]

well i prefer to get internal hard drives and put them in enclosures... often times it ends up being cheaper overall for $/gb and plus you can usually get a better enclosure then the ones that are both hd & enclosure sold together..

as for external enclosures i like Antec's MX-1 as it has good cooling and mine typically run only 5-10 degrees warmer then the drives in my pc (in celsius)

as for fast transfers, go eSata if your mobo can do it... but the only drawback to eSata is that you have to have the drive on when you boot your PC up for the bios to load it as it acts as if the drive is an internal sata drive..

otherwise i believe IEEE 1394 (firewire) is much faster then USB.. but with either of those i doubt you'll see any difference between 5400 or 7200 rpm spindle speeds, and 10000+ rpm's is definitly a waste for an external drive lol.. and solid state is a total waste of money unless you're rich and like the security of no moving parts


but as for actual external hard drives.. i dont really know much about specific ones, you might wanna go on like newegg.com and look at them and compare the ones that have the most reviews and highest ratings