for anyone looking for a great price on an external drive I just spotted this deal at buy.com. Fantom G-Force GF1000EU32 1 TB - Hard Drive "Fantom Drives G-Force eSATA\USB 2.0 Hard Drives offer the most affordable storage solution for USB and eSATA enabled PCs and Macs. The USB 2.0 interface is capable of up to 60MB\sec transfer rates while the eSATA interface is capable of up to 150MB/sec transfer rates. This products features sturdy aluminum casing to provide maximum durability, fan-free design for silent operation, and could be placed horizontally or stand vertically to allow maximum deskspace. From increasing storage space to providing a safe and flexible data backup solution, Fantom Drives G-Force eSATA\USB 2.0 Hard Drives are ideal for home and business users alike." a 1 TB hard drive for $59.99 and free shipping that is a decent deal and the customer reviews are good. Nice that it offers both usb and eSATA. I buy from buy.com often and have never had any issues with them and I know they do have a coupon code for first time buyers, so googling for buy.com codes should bring that up.

I use a Western Digital 80 Gb, external hard drive w/ USB2 conection. This drive has its own power source and does not swamp the USB port. (Most USB ports are protected from shorting. If a device pulls too much current from the port, it shuts down and a re-boot is required to get the port running again. I have a 120 Gb Passport drive for my laptop and the inrush of the drive motor will shut down the port. A "Y" connector is required so that the disc drive can pull power from 2 ports.) To back up my importnt data files, I do not use a "backup" utility that uses data compression and put a group of files into a file set. This harks back to tape drives and limited storge space. I simply copy my important data files using the same folder (directory) structure as on the parent drive. Now, the back up copies are readily available by a simple drag and drop operation. For example, you may have financial data that changes daily. Its simple matter to periodically write copies of the current files to the back up space.

I just bought an external drive this week and love it. Apart from being able to free up space on C:\, it is good for arranging automatic backups. I have it set to back up all of my documents, music, and pictures 4 days a week at a time when I am not going to be using the computer. Until now, I had been putting these backups on CDs and DVDs, but it is too easy to forget to make those backups, and it is also a nuisance saving and keeping track of the disks I saved them on. I like the way I can just drag things to the icon for the external drive, too. Easier than burning a CD or DVD, and it has the advantage that you can erase things and use that space again, the way you might on a floppy or a zip disk. My external drive is a 500GB Maxtor that I found on sale Mon. at Fry's in San Diego, for only $99.99. (They seem to change the products on sale from day-to-day, so I don't guarantee anyone will find the same thing at the same price another day. DH paid the same there the day before I did, but he only got a 300GB Maxtor external hard drive) Today a friend who has a business servicing other companies' computers told me he considers Western Digital's hard drives to be among the best, so you got a good one. However, I was happy when he also said I had gotten a bargain. Guess this is the time of year to look for bargains in computer stuff! I probably should mention that since my FireFox browser's "Bookmarks" (=Favorites in I.E.) and things I have saved in its "Scrapbook" add-on, or extension, are not located in My Documents and thus do not come under the automatic backing up, I am going to take care to back them up to the external drive manually every few days.

Lotodig, Is there a program? Yes, Acronis is pretty good. Some members of the forum has reported external hard drives that will backup your internal hard drive without having tertiary programs. Actually, what you're trying to do or should do is clone the internal hard drive. Sounds like you've already got the external hard drive. Well, plug it in and turn it on. Now go to "My Computer". Should have something listed there for your external, a D or M or F. Assuming you have XP operating system, open one of your folders and select a file but don't open the file. Now in the top left hand of the page, click on file. A dialog or menu box will open. Somewhere in that box will be the line "send file to". Click on that and then click on the letter designation for your external hard drive. Guess what, you've now completed the first lesson in external hard drive 101. Its really simple. Rather than going through each folder and sending it to the external, get a program like Acronis. It actually clones the internal hard drive. How much of the internal do you want to put on the external? Well, how many files can you afford to lose? Why not just do them all. There was a recent thread about restoring the internal from the external. The poster was having problems and one of the questions asked was, do you have all the incremental clones cause if you don't it won't work. My experience is that incrementals take a bit less time but I simply do the full clone. I keep 3 full clones on the external and when I do the next, I delete the oldest. Its really not complicated and perhaps the hardest part is remembering when to do the backup. I use a thumb drive to keep up to date on daily minor changes and then clone about every week. HTH Bob