Slim Devices SB3 external hard drive

I have recently seen 1TB IOMEGA external drives advertised for as little as $244. This would yield a price of less than $500 for a twin drive system for full backup. Here is the relevant IOMEGA page:
http://www.iomega.com/direct/products/family.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=26891277&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=26890319
I am not sure of long term reliability of IOMEGA drives. I chatted at RMAF with the McIntosh rep. . . McIntosh is using twin Seagate 500Gb Mission Critical drives for their music server offering. This simply points to the fact that manufacturers offer different levels of reliability for different applications. . . and what is found at Best Buy or Fry's may not be the most hardened versions. A call to Seagate, Iomega, Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung, Toshiba will let you determine what are their most reliable or mission critical offerings. Note: Maxtor is now part of the Seagate group.

Michael, perhaps you would like to tell my comatose Maxtor Onetouch 250Gb External that it has suffered only of a software crash and it's time to get off its little spinning a s s?!
Alternatively, you may want to visit Newegg.com and read user reports of various drives. . . reality is that consumer-level drives these day are often not terribly reliable. . . there is a real price war going on these days, and drives are cost engineered to a very low price point.

For latest pricing specials on hard drives see:
http://www.salescircular.com
Select your state. Click on hard drives. For reliability info on individual models check user reviews on Newegg, buy.com, CNET. Even from the same manufacturer, some drive models seem to be much more reliable than others. Good idea to maintain twin copies of the music collection on separate drives. Ideally drives should be from different manufacturers and they won't fail at the same time. . . . believe it or not, twin failures have happened as well. Optionally. . . makes ya bets'n takes ya chances !

For creating a music server around extremely rugged milspec external hard drives capable of surviving 1200G of accelleration see:
http://www.olixir.com
Somewhat pricier than run of the mill consumer grade drives, their 500GB solutions cost approx $550 after rebate. The 750GB drive is approx $750. . . still a bargain for audiophilically hardened pockets.
Olixir has an even more hardened line of drives, but those go only up to 160GB.