I have an external Western Digital 80 GB drive and have had no problems for 3 years (after I did a surface scan on it). I recommend a surface scan before using the drive. My drive had a few bad sectors that had not been marked off and these casued some pecular problems until this was discovered. It took 30 min to 1 hr to do a thorough surface scan but was well worth it. I noted in your post that you intend to have 'programs' as well as data on this external drive and may use this drive on another computer. Beware that if the programs are "installed" Windows programs, this may not work. It may work if the programs are of the stand alone variety such as code for BASIC, complied FORTRAN, or Visual Basic embedded in an EXCEL work sheet.

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 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.

Bus Driver: Several mornings, when I turned on my computer, I got the message that the Maxtor "wasn't there" or something like that. However, I found that if I clicked on the Remove Hardware Safely icon in the System Tray and then unplugged both USB and electric cables and plugged them in again after a minute (even a short time seems to reset it), then I "get it back". For the last three days, I haven't had to do that; it hasn't given me any trouble on start-up, and the mouse has not frozen when I checked the things inside the drive, so I am OK with the way it is now. After all, it only cost $99.99 for 500GB. I wouldn't give it away, although I admit that the next external drive I buy will probably NOT be a Maxtor! Maybe there is hope for your drive, too. You can always turn it off by clicking on the Sys. Tray icon and choosing Exit, but if you are only concerned about saving energy, you can do what CBoy does. I have mine set to turn off if it isn't used for 10 minutes.