<p>How useful are external hard drives? My mom just ordered a Sandisk Cruzer Micro 8GB USB drive for me (really small and 8 gigs!!), but I'm wondering if an external hard drive would help at all?</p>
<p>It's quite unlikely you'll need more than 8GB for a portable drive unless you're storing junk (eg. lots of music and movies) on it.</p>
<p>Well, having everything backed up somewhere is good for peace of mind.</p>
<p>Even though colleges block P2P networks online, there's still nothing stopping you from going to the guy down the hall and filling up your external hard drive with any music/movies/tv shows/pdf archives of textbooks he has that you want.</p>
<p>Is there any way to back up all my files to my 8GB Sandisk drive?</p>
<p>do you have more that 8gb on your harddrive? </p>
<p>i have several external hard-drives(1TB, 500GB, 80GB), all filled with music and 1080P movies/tv shows.</p>
<p>"i have several external hard-drives(1TB, 500GB, 80GB), all filled with music and 1080P movies/tv shows."</p>
<p>I drool at the thought of that... one disk for music, one for movies, one for games... potentially all connected to my 4 USB-port laptop at the same time...</p>
<p>It doesn't really matter how many drives you have, but rather how much space you have. If you get a really large drive, you could just store everything on one drive and carry less while using less power.</p>
<p>Personally, I have two 750GB hard drives. I've turned one of them to be an external via an enclosing. The other is still in its original packaging. I don't know when I'll need to use the other.</p>
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Is there any way to back up all my files to my 8GB Sandisk drive?
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<p>Depends on how much of your computer's hard drive you use (apart from the windows, etc...). If you don't include media (videos, music, games, images, and e-books), chances are you can fit everything into your Sandisk. Just copy the stuff there, keep it somewhere safe, and keep re-copying the files every once in a while. If you have any space leftover, you can begin putting e-books and images (likely to take the least space) on it.</p>
<p>A word of advice: Backup what you can't recover first and foremost. I mean, sure, it would be a pain in the ass to download a movie all over again, but if you have a homemade video of a wedding or something, back that one up first because if something happens, it is gone forever.</p>
<p>As for myself, I have a 500 GB drive attached to my 100 GB laptop. I put all my anime and movies solely in there and deleted them from my hard drive (they wouldn't fit, anyway). On the other hand my music, images, e-books and files are all backed up there (meaning I have copies in the hard disk AND in my computer).</p>