What's the Best External Hard Drive?

I’m planning to get an external hard drive. This is after my laptop crashed twice, and losing important files which I call precious photos. I started saving my photos in CDs since then. I have a stack of CD in my room and I want their contents to be transferred to a single, handy storage.

 

I was at the mall looking for external hard drives today and I couldn’t decide which one to get. At around 4000-5000 pesos with a 500GB storage capacity, I am choosing between the following brands:

GoFlex
Buffalo
Hitachi
Life Studio
Western Digital

Me thinks the best one is Buffalo, but I haven’t decided on that yet. Anyone using an external hard drive? Which one would you recommend?