After some casual online research, I settled for the Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1 TB, some 3 years back. My laptop's HD couldn't hold the weight of the movies and shows any more. So transferred all the 500 GB to my new HDD.
That was a life saver when I accidentally formatted the laptop.
Then I have bought the 2 TB model, recently, as the space was filling up.
Lookwise, this is not as beautiful as the previous model but looks more sturdy and I get a speed of about 80-90 MB/s. Don't know if the speed is'limited' by the USB port, but I assume this can be called great. Its light-weight.
And after all these years, I think its completely reliable.