External hard drive to install linux on?

[pie-rate]

I got a Seagate FreeAgent 80gb hard drive, I wanted to install linux on it and have a portable linux installation that I could boot on any system.

So, long story short, it had errors and remounted itself readonly, the hard drive isn't bad, google shows nothing but people with the same problem and no solution, and #linux on freenode wasn't able to help.

Now I'm going to take it back to the store and find a better one. I have more money and can afford a bigger one now anyway. What external hard drive models have people had success with booting linux from?

[bigtomrodney]

To be honest any external drive is fine. I would recommend one that has a Western Digital disk inside it but that could be any brand. In my experience that make have less problems, though that is only my experience.

The errors you got could be anything from bad formatting to mount/unmount trouble. I wouldn't worry too much about it if you are swapping it. It could be a single bad cluster or possibly nothing hardware related.

The short answer however is all of these drives are Universal Mass Storage (UMS) and use the same drivers and protocols, so brands don't really matter.

[pie-rate]

I have, after hours googling and reading forums, discovered why this is happening and (maybe) how to fix it.
NSLU2-Linux - FAQ / DealWithAutoSpinDownOnSeagateFreeAgent browse

Some keywords to help google find the above wiki:
seagate freeagent spin down read only aborted journal error external hard drive