hi. Ive just bought a 1tb external harddrive which i intend to use to back up all my photos+music.Can anyone tell me, could i store more programmes on there? ie games,photo edit software,media player etc. I would like to free up as much space on my C: drive as possible maybe just run the internet from my pc and store everything else on my external harddrive... can i do this????? if so is it a case of just sending the items to the E/HD? thanks for your help in advance.

If the drive is hooked up permanently, it 'should' work fine. But the potential is there for the drive letter to be changed by windows if it is disconnected at any time. If the drive letter is changed, any programs on the drive will fail to work. But it might be just a minor annoyance, because you can use Disk Management to reset it to the correct letter. Personnally, I think it's better to install it internally. But I don't have a really good reason.

You should be keeping TWO copies of all your personal data like music, photos, etc. Is that drive an eSATA unit? Is it one drive or two?

hi.Thank's for your replies.The E/HD is a single Western Digital 3.5" Elements 1TB 3.5 inch.Othehill do you mean i won't be able to delete all my media off my C: drive once i have loaded it onto my E/HD??.I was kinda hoping i could as this was the reason i bought it was to free up some disk space.

Sure you can delete those files. Should you? Not IMO. I believe your computer is a Laptop model. If so, you may not have the option of a second drive. What I would suggest you do is this. Burn files like music and photos to DVDR media and check the disk afterward to verify you can read the files. Put the DVDR away and now you can safely use the external and still have two copies. Be sure to identify what is on each disk. You can do that with labels or with an external sheet of paper you printed from the list on your computer. If the files are small, things like word files, etc. can be kept in their default location in My Documents and then keep a backup copy on the external. You can buy a sleeve of DVDR disks on sale for $20. You can start by burning the stuff that is already on your hard drive and then transfer it to the external. You can try running programs from the external. As long as you have the disks in case the drive fails there is no harm. They may not perform as well as expected. What size is your internal hard drive?