External USB HDD

I'm looking for an external HDD to use with my laptop. Key citeria: Lots of storage, silent operation, cool operation. Exactly the stuff you'd want if you left your laptop running all night long for extended periods of time just to check /. each morning just after you've woken up ... you get the point. Furthermore, no irritating lights, please! My room is already illuminated brightly enough by dozens of erratically blinking LEDs from diverse networking and telecommunication equipment (luckily enough, I've been able to avoid glaring blue LEDs so far) as well as life-support systems (I just NEED coffee). Ideally, an adjustable illumination would be great, so I can have 70's Italo Disco when I want to wake up and nothing but darkness when I want to sleep.
Perhaps the most important point of all: The price tag. EUR 100 to EUR 120 is what I'm willing to pay for.
I'd be glad if the equipment I'm about and willing to buy featured some longer-than-1-year warranty. HDD makers usually offering 3 to 5 years and then sticking to just one on their external products don't really get my trust in terms of reliability--the products might be quiet and cheap, but this just destroys the drives due to lack of decent cooling.

I've looked at several products so far, but the competition is amazing, so I've got no clue where to start.
I'm not fixed on pre-built drives, as I--lo and behold!--posess a series of screwdrivers ALL ON MY OWN and I am WILLING TO USE THEM! Ahem.

Seagate's FreeAgent (orange!) Desktop series seems to look nice, apart from the incredibly ugly design (which is not of great concern, anyway), featuring a 5-year warranty and no obvious screaming miniature fans. The 500 GiB model is just about 120 Euros. Does anyone know if it's really quiet and cool? Can the lighting be turned off?

Alternative suggestions are very welcome!

I'll try to help you as far as I can, but there are a few things you need to do.

If you require the 3.5" form due to capacity needs, then there's a certain level of heat and sound you're going to have to accept.

Naturally, we can minimize those.  For heat, use an aluminum case, and the more "finny", the better.  For sound, well, I've found that there's little telling until you run the drive.  Go to a local computer retailer and ask to have them plug in a prospective drive in-store to see how quiet it is.  A place like Best Buy has a service section that has computers already open and ready for such stuff, but I don't know their policies on opening shrink-wrapped packages just to test the drive's sound.

Drives probably have sound ratings.  You'll have to do your own research on that one.  If you know an existing drive that is quiet or loud, google its specs to get an idea of what dB it's rated at.  I believe that OSHA might require that all parts like that have a sound rating, and MIL SPEC might place an additional requirement.

A final note about illumination:  If you're going to put the drive into the enclosure yourself, stopping LEDery should be trivial.

Let us know how you fare.  I've been bothered by noisy hard drives before (I had an IDE 10GB drive that was ungodly!) and I'm interested in what you conclude.