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wow, bigbear you're like me only you've actually applied yourself. I'm also going for the ET degree, and currently doing my sophomore project. We are going to use a Microchip PIC to control a small robot vehicle to drive itself around a predefined track. Then we get to take it to Salt Lake City to compete against all the other ET students doing this project.
Assembly for a microcontroller is really not that bad, and its actaully kind of fun. Then again, I never had any previous experience writing software to control and interact with external hardware. I made a kick ass voltmeter using AD converters using a 68HC11. My pride and joy!
Anyway, SFKing, to answer your questions here, for a hard drive I would suggest Western Digital. I know plenty of people might shoot down this idea, but I have no idea why. WD makes pretty high quality stuff. I use them in almost all applications and have had no brand-specific problems. Most WD products come with a 3 year warranty, which is very handy if a major problem comes up. Pretty much all of the drive manufacturers are price competitive, but the best bang for your buck is going to be WD.
As far as models go, I would take a serious look at their new 10000rpm raptor SATA drive. The are only about 40 gb, but they are hella fast, and if you throw two of them into a Raid 0 (striping) configuration, you've got a VERY fast set of drives. The drawback is if one of the drives fail, you lose all of your data on both drives.
If you are looking for just mass storage for videos and mp3s, then just go with a standard ATA (parallel ATA) drive, 7200rpm, 8mb cache. I just saw this week Office Max is having a rebate deal: WD 80gb, 7200rpm, 8mb cache for $20.00 They are currently taking rain checks because they FLEW off the shelves, but you might want to look at the retail stores for rebate deals like that. If your looking at the higher capacity drives, retail may be a bad idea, because they tend to not offer rebates with those. Go to Pricewatch.com and search for the sizes you want. BTW: MDT (Magnetic Data Technology) uses WD parts.
I personally am planning on 2 40gb raptor drives in raid 0 and two mass storage drives (one is my old ATA 40gb) and the other will be a 80 or 120gb drive for all my music, video, lan party crap, etc.
As for DVD burners, you really need to do your research. The DVD+R format is the unofficial format that will be adopted, so be careful when you go out to buy a drive. Just to be safe make sure you get one with this on it: DVD+r, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, because different standalone players read different formats (that the big brand names for that screw-up)
Brands are a toss up, I'd suggest TDK or Plextor as my top choices. Under that: Pioneer, LITE-ON.
I wouldn't get a non brand name or the unknown brand names, just because you never know what your going to get. You'll pay around $150 to $250 for a good drive. Speeds are going to be mostly 4x, but the 8x's are out, but still pretty expensive.
(on a side note, cd burners are very established technology, and so you should be able to pick a cheapo one with buffer underrun protection for VERY cheap)
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