RE: Having a Real Bitch of a Morning... This Morning
If I can make a recommendation ... get yourself a wireless NAS (Network Access Storage). You simply need to connect it to your wifi, then on your PC/MAC/Linux machines, you can mount to it.
Here's a specific example.
DiskStation DS218
If you get one with two disks, set up in RAID0, if one of the drives is going down, you pull it out and replace it. The NAS will automatially mirror the good drive to the new drive.
With most of them you can set them up to automagically backup your files from your devices as soon as the power up.
I keep mine in the basement and forget that I have it. When I power up my computer, the NAS compares the drives on my machines to the backup drives and updates the backups as required. I never need to do anything.
I know that he's officially out of the game, but I'm sure @exyle would help you out if you offered him another fantastic weekend of gaming and eating.
The "NAS" solution is something a good friend of mine has always been at me to get implemented. And now, I'm determined to get it done. NAS has an incredible system of data redundancy so I'll be looking into it in the near future. Hopefully things remain as they are till then.
I did a little troubleshooting with @exyle earlier on as well. And real helpful he was too. :)
I've used LaCie and Synology at home and they both have a very simple user interface. The ability to hot swap the drives is great - no down time.
And both units are OS agnostic, so you can connect with MAC, Windows or Linux.
Get one that can support large drives, but get the drives that you need currently. Swapping to larger drives is as simple as pulling one of the old ones out, replacing it with one of the new ones, then waiting for it to mirror, then repeat with the other.
Once you have the unit, you can set it up in under 30 minutes...