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.

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.

Portable vs external - there's no standardization of terms. Though, "portable" drives are often the smaller 2.5 inch laptop drive variety, while "external" often use the larger 3.5 inch drives and so the case they're in is larger. Function and use are the same, with one exception: The larger drives often need an external (AC) power supply, which makes them less convenient to use. The smaller ones are usually powered by the USB connection itself. Don't be sucked in by marketing hype, drives are commodity products and most drives of known manufacturers (like Hitachi, WD, Seagate) are of equal high quality. These things are often on sale, if you look around, you're likely to find what you want in the $60-$80 range. Also, keep in mind that all hard drives ultimately die. Think "When", not "If". If you want to be certain to have your important files (whether photos or otherwise), make two backup copies and keep one copy at a different location (like at work or at someone else's house).

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