I'm looking for a good external hard-drive. Either 500 GB or 1 TB of information.

A lot of the drives I find only have USB connection too. Is there any loss of quality using USB instead of FIREWIRE?

Thank you.

USB's fast, firewires faster. Usually there’s no loss, just don’t use a USB extension. Try an Ethernet connection. They’re also good.

Also try only for a Seagate.

If you use a mac these are the best:

http://www.g-technology.com/index.cfm

All different sizes and most have USB 2.0, firewire, and eSATA.

I have a 500 GB I've been using for about a year and never had a problem with it. And it's super quiet.

newegg.com has some pretty good deals. I bought a Lacie 750gb with firewire 800 last year and it's awesome! I have no complaints about it so far.

Lacie (not their porsche version) is very reliable. I've also had good luck with seagate and western digital. Beware of Maxtor, I have heard nothing but horror stories.

I have an iOmega external hard drive. It is very fast, compact, and it looks great with a MacBook Pro!
The size and speed are great "bang-for-your buck". I purchased mine at an Apple Store.

I also have a Lacie Porsche version hard drive. It is not as compact, but has more space. However, I have only heard bad news about these drives, but I have not personally had any trouble with mine.

Overall, I'd go for the iOmega, especially if you're working with transporting and laptops.

Stay away from Phantom Drives brand. They have a nice case and all but the cheap WD drive inside has failed on me twice in the one year period now. Next time it goes I am swapping it out for a WD Black series.

I personally would buy a case and put an internal drive inside...that way you know what's going inside.

Does Maxtor still have problems now that Seagate owns and runs them?

USB2 is theoretically as fast as or faster than Firewire, but it doesn't work out that way in real world use.

Firewire is superior to USB for streaming a steady flow of data (like video), while USB is better for the type of data flow that you might find in, say, mice or keyboards.

Also the Firewire spec calls for a dedicated hardware controller chip that handles all the I/O while USB uses your processor to handle that. This is less of a problem now that processors have gotten so powerful (and multicore) but it could theoretically become an issue if you are doing something processor intensive (like, say, video?)