I took a slightly different approach when I bought a larger drive. I got a drive imaging program, created an image and a boot CD with the image software on it and then just restored the image to the new drive (but told the image program to expand the partition size). I used a program from Terabyte Unlimited called Drive image, but Acronis True image and Norton Ghost are probably better known. Depending on where you buy the drive, sometimes they'll include a limited use version of a drive imaging program to simplify it for you.

I have three external drives constructed by using hard drives pulled from computers that were headed to the recycle center. I purchased hard drive enclosures from eBay and added the drives. The installation was very easy. The drives are recognised very quickly and data transfer is fast enough with USB 2.0. They act very much like a flash drive and no driver is required unless you have Windows 98 or older. I paid less then $20 for the enclosures and got the drives for free. All of my enclosures have on/off switches and LEDs indicating power and usage. One uses a notebook drive and it can fit in my shirt pocket very nicely.I would recommend converting an extra drive if you have one. External drives are great for additional storage. They are also excellent for sharing and transporting files between several computers.

bus driver: The chances are you are not going to find any big files but if you look in the right places, you WILL find billions of small files. I wouldn't recommend loading anything else on your computer until you have cleaned the hard drive off a bit. 1: clean out your Temporary internet files. In IE that option will be under tools, Internet options. In Firefox it is under Tools, Options, Privacy. 2. Delete other Temporary files. Click Start, Search, All files and folders. Type TEMP in the first search box and click search. Anything in the Temp folders can be deleted safely. Any file with a .tmp extention can be deleted. A warning though, there may be some files that can not be deleted there as that is where most virus scanning software put their processing logs. Those will have a very recent date on them. Don't worry though, Windows will yell at you and tell you when it can't delete a file. 3. Go to control panel, double click "add or remove programs" a. Look through the list that populates for programs you no longer use and uninstall them. b. Look for programs that you don't recognize.. do a online search to determine what they are and if you think you don't need them, uninstall them also. 4. Empty your Recycle Bin. 5. Do a disk defrag. The default windows will work.. there are others that are better. Right click on your start button, click explore. Right click on "local drive (C:)" click on Properties. Click the second tab, Tools, Defrag will be the middle choice. Let us know what your disk space is after you have done that.

I have a similar portable external hard drive (Toshiba) that I use for my laptop backups. It is 5400 rpm as is the main internal drive in the laptop. When I was looking to buy, I do not recall seeing any of the 2.5" external drives that were 7200 rpm. Now, on the other hand, my desktop internal drive is a SATA 7200 rpm drive, so I chose a 7200 rpm 3.5", 1TB external drive for backing up that computer. It also is a USB 3.0 drive, so when I get a new computer with USB3 ports, it will be much faster. It's really a matter of personal choice. The Toshiba is so quiet I hardly know it's running except for the blinking light, and it also does not get hot. So for a portable drive, I think it's just great. Mine is 500GB.