Things worth noting about external HDDs, and HDDs in general is because they have moving parts the DoA rate is really high. Don't let a DoA spoil your opinion on a brand, the rate is far higher than any other computer component. I know that the last time I bought an HDD the rate was over 1%. SeaGate are okay drives, but they're definitely cheaper than Western Digital. I really like the Western Digital network drives because of them being user serviceable, so even if they die you just buy another internal drive and pop it in the external casing. Also the write rate over ethernet is a lot higher than the write rate from USB 2.0 which most drives are.