I'm back and searching for a good, reliable hard drive enclosure that has esata connection (for faster data transfer). I didn't realize that the drives we discussed above were only USB transfer. I had bought the Nexstar CX: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cart/view-upsell.html?ie=UTF8&HUCT=2&newItems=U35WX1CZO87WNR%2C1 But when I went to set it up, discovered that it is only USB connection. I didn't realize that by sata they meant the hard drive type - not how the external drive would connect to my pc. So now I'm still looking for a reliable hard drive enclosure - with esata connection (and actually, one with usb and esata would be great). Thanks. Lynn.

Grandms - I checked hidden icons and it wasn't there. So I just did it by turning off the computer. Canibus - since I have an on/off switch, if I turn that off, is it sufficient to do that first - then disconnect the esata cable? I did unplug it - but may have turned it off, disconnected from pc, and then unplugged power. These are such important things - the order of shut down and disconnection. It's something I never thought about until very recently - and several people I've talked to since had no idea about the safely remove hardware button - or the order of disconnecting,powering down an external drive. The people I talked to just unplugged the drive - and so far they've been very, very lucky. When I reconnect the ext. drive, just want to be sure I have the order correct: computer off connect external drive to power adapter and plug it in connect esata (or usb) cable to computer turn on the hard drive (or do I turn it on before connecting to pc?) turn on the computer I'm asking bc. I just got an external drive for my daughter's computer and the instructions don't say anything about whether the computer has to be off or on before connecting the ext. drive. Thanks. Lynn.

Janette, The default backup location of the 'Windows Backup Utility' is the 'Floppy' drive. Under 'Choose a place to save your backup', click the 'browse' button and select a location on your drive, maybe your documents folder, to save the backup and give it a name. You should then be able to use your recording software to copy this file to CD or DVD. I have an external, Western Digital 120, hard drive that I bought at Best Buy a few years ago. Usually the drives will come with a backup software, mine came with 'Dantz Retrospect', but I haven't used it. I use a couple different options for backup. I use 'Acronis True Image', a drive imaging software, which I can use to restore an exact replica of my drive, operating system, settings, documents, etc., from a partition on my external drive to my internal drive in case of internal drive failure or corruption. I also just use the 'copy and paste' feature to backup 'My Documents' to the external drive even though it is redundant and not necessary because I can also retrieve files from the 'Acronis' image. Just 'putzin'. Witz Here is a link that might be useful: Windows Backup Utility

It sounds like you want to move the data more then just back it up. You should be able to accomplish that with an external drive. The question is, do you have enough music or other files to warrant purchasing a 750 GB drive over a 320GB A couple things to remember, the external drives are great for a temporary storage medium, but I would rather have them on a solid medium as a backup such as a dvd. They do go bad as often as, and sometimes more often then internal drives. I have been working on computers for a long time, and I never understood why someone would back up the whole computer versus just their data. Most of the programs do not have the ability to restore your computer from a backup. You should have the setup cds or dvd from your computer so you should be able to (if needed) reinstall the operating system from scratch should the drive go bad or you get a virus that kills it. There are programs out there that can backup the whole system, but why would you want to? Raid, This is where you have 2 or more hard drives running the same data/ os. If your computer came with the ability to do a raid setup it is usually just 2 or more hard drives with the same data on it. For a detailed description it would be best to do a google search for it. There are different levels of raid. In my experience, the lower levels of raid aren't of much use. I have seen cases where the main drive dies and the data is not readable. In the higher levels of raid, it is spread out or stripped over several different drives and protects you from data loss. Over all, I think for home use it is just best to use a good backup strategy for data (CD or DVD or Tape) of the actual data and should something bad happen, you can restore the data and load the OS from scratch. Here is a link that might be useful: Raid defined