Choosing a 500gb external hdd for OSX and XP?

[william wizz]

I'm looking to buy a 500gb external hard drive for backing up purposes. I plan on using it on both my MacBook Pro and my old PC (I can't find the specs at the moment its in a box). These are the candidates I have found so far:

LaCie Porsche Design External 500GB Hard Drive £66.88 (might be able to save £15 if I get it with an amazon mastercard) 2 year limited warranty

Iomega 500GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive £68.61 unknown warranty

How stable are external hard drives? I've heard of people who clone their standard hard drive, running windows or osx onto an external hard drive which leads me to believe that an external hard drive must be more stable.
Is there anything I can do to an external hard drive to make it less stable?

All help is welcome

 

[wrestlingnrj]

An external HDD is more reliable because of the fact that you can unplug it when it's not being used, thereby decreasing the chances of a failure. I do not have my HDD cloned on to an external, but rather I just keep a backup of all of my data on it. All I can recommend is turning it off when it's not being used.

 

[phucng_10]

Most people actually use external HDD for backing up their files as what wrestlingnrj said. It's a fact that sometimes the internal HDD can be damaged and most files you have saved is on there. Unless you're quick enough to know what might have went wrong, then you can save those files using some programs to back it up.