My wife and I were looking for something like that as well. We found this "Bose Wave-ish" type product at Costco called the "Mint". We tried it at the store and it sounded good, and was on sale for $99.00. We took it home and we love it! It sounds just as good as a Wave I think, but way cheaper and it has some great features.

1) it has an iPod docking station right on front. We have an old iPod that we keep docked there so it is always available.
2) it has a USB port if you want to hook up a hard drive like you suggested.
3) it has a wireless transmitter and receiver in the box that you can use with your laptop and play all the songs from your iTunes program wirelessly to the Mint radio. We haven't tried it yet because the iPod dock works fine for us. But if we outgrow the capacity of the iPod we may try the wireless feature.

The radio is even a little smaller then a Wave and it looks great. I'd recommend it to anyone. The problem is I don't see it at Costco anymore. I found it at Best Buy, but it is $139.00 there. Here's a link if you want to take a look.

http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/bbs521/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/784355

Good Luck!
Todd Barrett
#5068-91