External hard drive

[Tater]

I want to get an external hard drive so I can keep some, more or less, useless files off my computer (ie-music, vid clips, etc). It would also be used for transfering files from work to home or home to work. Basically, it will be used for storage to keep from bogging my internal hard drive. I'm looking for something in the 80-100 gig area. Any suggestions?

[M.T. Pockets]

I am not a computer person, by a long shot. But, I do own several computers in my business and I started using external hard drives for backup purposes earlier this year. In fact, I'm cleaning one out as I'm typing this, it stores about a month of backups, then when one fills up I erase all but the last two days and start from there again.

In a nutshell, they're great. My PC technician has been recommending them to small businesses like mine for about a year and has a lot of positive experience with them.

I use two of them, I alternate them daily and backup my entire hard drive everyday and bring it to an off site safe. I just grab the other one out of the safe and bring it to work the next day.

I've yet to retrieve anything, but my tech. was here last night and gave me a demo on how to do so. All the information was there and easy to retrieve.

I use iomega's and haven't had any trouble at all. I think they're 120 gig, not much more price to upgrade to that size from the 80's I was looking at to begin with.

[Rocky Raab]

Me, too. I use an Iomega and have it set up to automatically duplicate anything I save to "My Documents" on the C: drive. It also dupes my bookkeeping software.

Once a month or so, I make a complete "mirror" copy of my C: drive so that any changes in software and such are safe.

Hard to imagine a better system.

But for transferring data between computers, or for when I want to be able to take my data on trips, I much prefer a simple thumb drive.