<p>i got a really good deal on my external hard drive after christmas a couple years back... payed $20 for a 200 GB HDD and $20 for the case... i think i got them from CircuitCity and NewEgg, respectively...</p>
<p>Penn State offers storage online I believe. Do you think USB drives and online is enough? $80 is still money despite the deal...</p>
<p>^^^ depends how much online storage is offered, and whether you can share it (easily) with friends etc.</p>
<p>USB drives are 512KB to 2GB. That's more than enough for all your important files. Gmail offers over 5 GB to its users.</p>
<p>External hard drives are only necessary for those individuals that need to back up large collections of media files.</p>
<p>External hard drives can improve system performance if you have disk-intensive applications running in the background.</p>
<p>Flash drives can be bought with 8-16 GB now. I have an 8 GB USB drive and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the largest available.</p>
<p>Yea, ive seen 16gb flash drives.</p>
<p>32 gb ones exist, too. A few days ago you could get a 16gb one for something like $27 after rebate.</p>
<p>My brother tried to buy that but just as he added it to his cart buy.com rose the price so that it was like $50 AR</p>
<p>I just bought a 500GB external harddrive for $80. There's a $20 mail in rebate to get it to that price though.</p>
<p>Fantom</a> Drives G-Force 500GB USB 2.0 & eSATA External Hard Drive - GF500EU - Buy.com</p>
<p>Should you bring an external hard drive?</p>
<p>Are you kidding? Yes! I'm bringing three!</p>
<p>BCEagle91, Son's Dell xps3300 was about 8 weeks old and last week, the nvidia
8400GS fried the computer. Dell came and replaced the motherboard, Geo 8400GS, RAM, and whatever. It too, had the penryn processor. They replaced it quickly--came to the house within 24 hours of the call. The only problem is, they replaced the damaged parts with the same defective 8400GS. They've provided a BIOS update/download to lessen the chance of another meltdown. What the update does is make the fan blow more often to cool down the internal temperature. Well, it's fixed but I don't know for how long. I decided to give my new macbook (about 4 weeks old) to him to take to school because I'm not very confident that the problem with the 8400GS isn't going to happen again. In my opinion, "Lessening" the chance of a repeat meltdown is not a adequate fix for a new $2,000 laptop. Even if they had replaced the laptop with a new one, the new one would have had the same bad issue.</p>
<p>My daughter's MBP video card just died this morning. nVidia 8600. I'm bringing it down to the Apple Store tomorrow for repair. I think that nVidia's fix stinks but what are all of the OEMs going to do? It's hard to believe that nVidia can't come up with a better solution in silicon. I'm surprised that computer manufacturers aren't running to ATI in droves over this problem. But it takes some effort to reengineer for other graphics boards.</p>
<p>I hear you on the issue of a student's laptop failing. I may leave my Dell XPS M1330 (just got it for traveling but I use my MBP for everything else) with our son as a backup for his MBP. I don't expect it to fail like our daughter's because he doesn't play games like she does.</p>
<p>Son's nvidia fried and he didn't have any games on the laptop--Only Vista Business, itunes, facebook, aim, microsoft student office, and adobe. The problem seems to be with the high temperature associated with it. Even with the "fix" from Dell, it seems to run very hot (again, not running any games).</p>
<p>That's pretty disappointing. The 8400 is a lower-end offering from nVidia. The 8600 (which we have in our MBPs) are the midrange with the 8700s and 8800s at the high end. Don't recall if they have some higher-end models.</p>
<p>Vista can be pretty tough on graphics systems. Some suggest turning off all of the eye-candy on Vista to improve performance.</p>
<p>Yea, he wasn't using any of the eye candy. The Vista Business is pretty straight forward the way he has it set up. It looks very similar to the way XP looks. The 8400GS actually cooked during a simple virus scan. This was the only program running. 2 days before the actually burn out of the motherboard/8400GS, the LED screen flickered once and the computer shut down on its own. It happened a second time. Following that, all he.. broke loose! Weird shapes, blue screen, checkboard. It happened quickly without much warning. Just a big screen flicker, a shutdown by the computer, and then it was dead. </p>
<p>It was the Dell xps 1330 that cooked with the nvidia. I mistyped in the post above.</p>
<p>The macbook doesn't have this problem, but they are starting to see it with the MacBook Pro.</p>
<p>The 8800's aren't affected by this problem, but I'm pretty sure the 8700's are.</p>
<p><<flash drives="" can="" be="" bought="" with="" 8-16="" gb="" now.="" i="" have="" an="" 8="" usb="" drive="" and="" i'm="" pretty="" sure="" that="" it="" wasn't="" the="" largest="" available.="">></flash></p>
<p>Flash drives are manufactured at least in 64 GB now. I haven't seen higher, though.</p>
<p>I just saw a 128 GB Flash Drive (SSD) as an option for a Dell laptop. It added about $400 to the price so they are coming down in price. Intel showed some performance figures for their upcoming SSDs which look a lot better than the current generation products.</p>
<p>ferryboat10 also has a good idea. If you buy several usb drives (they are cheap now) you can back up your files on them. If the HD goes, you should have the software (e.g. office, etc anyway) which you can load. This is a cheaper way to go and saves room if that matters.</p>
<p>@BCEagle91 Windows 7 doesn’t like ATI drivers, at least not for their 5xxx series cards.</p>