We’ve had trouble with Toshiba drives and the replacement Western Digital drives are dog slow to the point of being unusable. All the reviews I read for drives are horrible and just about every drive has 4 stars and still has terrible problems.
Can you recommend a 750+GB portable drive that we can buy from Amazon or Newegg?
MetaBrainz Blog 
I’ve found that purchasing an enclosure and a quality hard drive separate is the best way to go. I don’t have recommendations on portable enclosures but I’ve heard promising things about the hybrid drives in regards to speed (not sure about reliability): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148837
I second the enclosure / separate hard drive.
All drives die eventually, at least you will keep the enclosure.
And prefer USB 3.0 or eSATA if you can.
That hybrid drive is only interesting in some *read* scenarios, however.
I’ve started buying enterprise drives. They cost more, but are made of much more durable parts, and have warranties far beyond regular consumer drives. Probably not strictly cost effective, but considering the my time spent replacing broken drives isn’t free, not to mention peace of mind, I think I’m coming out ahead. And yes, using an eSATA enclosure will probably speed things way up compared to any USB 2.0 drive.