Do you need a special external hard drive for iMac?

Any external hard drive that will connect via Firewire 800, USB, or Thunderbolt will work.

I have a 750GB Western Digital Scorpio drive in an OWC case, sitting on a Backpack, which connects via Firewire. Western Digital Scorpio drives have 5 year warranties, the OWC (macsales.com) cases usually use the Oxford chipset which works well with macs, and the Backpack is a slick way to mount a backup drive without taking up desk space.

After you hook up whatever external drive you end up with, you'll partition and initialize it for OS X, then begin using it.

My opinion, I would not get a Western Digital pre-packaged external drive/case. While the hard drives are OK, there have been a number of people that have had issues with the electronics.

hi,

what about the mac mini? is that any good for what you pay for one? i want an external hard drive but dont wanna splash out megabucks so what would you suggest? how much are the ones your talking about above?

You might consider one of the external hard drives that OWC offers.

The Mac Mini is a computer, not a dedicated, external, large storage hard drive.