ideas on the sturdiest external HD?

[Eight]

Sorry, to qualify that's a little more than 10 seconds after BIOS... BIOS takes probably another 10 seconds or so to run through all the SATA/USB detection and stuff.

 

[badbread]

Check this bad boy out:
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/12/04/techspot-a-data-sh93-rugged-portable-hard-drive-review

 

[screebo]

fwiw, i have a 250g mybook by Western Digital thats been working fine for me for the past 5 years. I recently bought a new 1tb mybook by Western Digital thats been running for about 1-2 years now and no failures yet....

+1
I use a 500g MybookPro by Western Digital via firewire 800. It's fast and bulletproof.