Well, it's not only price, but more importantly, the price of these 
external drives are combining cheaper and cheaper per gb of storage.
It is not unusual these days to see a 750gb and possibly upon occasion a 
1tb (that is 1,000gb) of storage for around $100.

For those not familiar with external drives, there are 2 types:  1 is a 
3.5-inch drive which is a.c. powered and is generally used with desktops 
or laptops which are used more or less as desktops in a permanent 
location.
The 2nd kind is a 2.5-inch drive which are ggenerally powered from a usb 
port.  The drawback to these 2.5-inch drives is that there rotational 
speed can be a bit slower (5400 rpm rather than 7200 rpm) and that, due to 
getting their power from the usb port, can be a drain on the pc.
So the latter are viewed as portable drives and the former as drives to be 
used in permanent locations.
I use both -- the 3.5 as my primary backup as well as my primary drive for 
podcasts and radio recordings through streaming and the 2.5 portables when 
on the road and as a secondary back-up backing up the back-up.
The smaller drives, being portable units, tend to be slightly more costly 
per gb of storage as compared to their 3.5-inch cousins.

These drives are available almost everywhere -- the last one I bought was 
at a Walmart. and Sunday sale ads always have some brand on sale 
somewhere.

For serious pc users, they are a must.




The Holy Spirit is nothing more than God in motion.

Ray Pritchard, Keep Believing Ministries
from the sermon "The Wind Blows Wherever It Wills
http://www.keepbelieving.com/podcasts/HolySpirit1-Final.mp3"


    VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
Archived on the World Wide Web at
    http://listserv.icors.org/archives/vicug-l.html
    Signoff: [log in to unmask]
    Subscribe: [log in to unmask]