Hard Drives

I'm looking into buying an external hard drive to backup my laptop. At first I thought I would go wihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifth a small portable drive since I only have one computer and don't store too many files. But while researching options I stumbled across a few drives that let you access your data through the internet, effectively creating your own server. I really like this idea and think it could be a good fit for my needs, especially since I'll be traveling a lot in the near future with access to a separate machine than my home unit.

My chief concerns are:

1. Security
   
2. Price
   
3. Mac and PC compatibility
   
4. Size: I don't need a lot of space, but I would like room to expand.
   
5. Heat, noise, general disturbances caused by running the unit

Here is a list of links with my research thus far:

• CNet - Drives that let you access your data wherever you are
  
• Buffalo has gotten very bad user ratings on CNet
  
• Western Digital - Bad ratings for MioNet software package
  
• Linksys - Poor transfer speeds
  
• Iomega - Poor software
  
• SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS Server - cheap, software has very high reviews, tech support mixed reviews, note: quiet, Mac and PC Compatibility (apparently not for Vista), not sure if it works as a server