I had firewire on my old iPod but they don't make them with it any more, I'm not sure new Macbooks have them either but they are good and it'll mean one less USB point used up.
I have a USB, 500GB MyBook (http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/06/14/western-digital-500-gig-my-book-premium-review/). My iTunes is on there, it starts up if I press play or open a file on it, otherwise it puts itself to sleep till I need it. My last one was a LaCie and it never went to sleep, was noisy and had to be turned on and off from the back of it.
When you plug an external drive into a Mac (at least on mine) it asks to partition it or something with a built in wizard thing, I don't think I had to put anything extra into it at all. you can get it so it'll work with Mac and PCs as well.
Have you tried re-par-whatsit-ing the external drive you have? Disk Utility might help.
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I have a USB, 500GB MyBook (http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/06/14/western-digital-500-gig-my-book-premium-review/).
My iTunes is on there, it starts up if I press play or open a file on it, otherwise it puts itself to sleep till I need it. My last one was a LaCie and it never went to sleep, was noisy and had to be turned on and off from the back of it.
When you plug an external drive into a Mac (at least on mine) it asks to partition it or something with a built in wizard thing, I don't think I had to put anything extra into it at all. you can get it so it'll work with Mac and PCs as well.
Have you tried re-par-whatsit-ing the external drive you have? Disk Utility might help.