What kind of external hard drive is ideal for me?

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I have a ThinkPad T60 with a hard drive that has 80GB worth of space. I wanted to get an external hard drive that has high quality & enough space for me to back up my entire hard drive (in case of any crashes or failures to come).What kind of hard drive brand/type would be ideal, & would 250GB be alright for backup purposes?Just to note, I have found 3 kinds of hard drive in a Harvey Norman Australia store: - WD Passport Elite hard drive that has different amounts of space like 160GB, 250GB & 400GB, with backup software pre-installed;- Maxtor portable hard drive (can't remember the exact name) that has only 160GB space at this time in the store; &- Verbatim Portable Hard Drive with 160GB & 250GB worth of space, & backup software pre-installed.If any of the above are worth a bomb to spend, please mention it in your answers.Thanks a lot for any help provided.Thanks for the quick replies. I just want to add a few things:1) Because of the lack of space in my laptop hard drive I was thinking if I could just install programs & games on a hard drive itself. Of course, I can use my old 80GB Seagate Free Agent Go, but the thing is I got lots of clattered stuff in there too.2) Because my ThinkPad laptop has a backup & recovery utility solution, I may use the external hard drive to do rountine back up my entire laptop just in case.I hope more suggestions come in soon! Thanks!

[ReviewsBV]

I would get the WD Passport Elite, I would NEVER buy the Maxtor or Verbatim.You would only be backing up your DATA, not the installed programs and such. That is what the Restore disks and other program disks are for. You should have plenty of free space on that external drive for additional photos, movies and music. Good luck