
I recently got a new netbook and don't want to gunk it up with photos and music, plus it doesn't have a cd drive. So I decided to get an external hard drive to make it easier to have all my photos, music and work files move between my netbook and desktop without making copy after copy on CD and not knowing what's on where.
My big concern was that external hard drives would not be interchangeable between vista and XP, as now I have 2 xp systems and one vista. but the more I read about it, it depends on what kind of file system you have on your computer, not necessarily what system you are running. All of mine run NTFS. The problem apparently would be if one of my systems was fat32(I think that's the name, forgive me if I'm wrong on the specific spelling) and the others NTFS. You can find this out by going to "my computer" and right clicking on C drive, and then going to properties. There it will tell you about 1/2 way down.
So far this hard drive is easy to use, has the software right on it if you want to use it, and I loaded it up with years of photos, and so far I've only used 4 out of the 250gb(233 after the preloaded software). My biggest fear is that something happens to it, so I'll still be backing up to CD or DVD but it will be great to have everything in one spot vs. searching thru cds when I need something. Plugs in and powers via one USB cord and lights up so you know it has power. Seems pretty portable and it's pretty to boot! I don't know why I waited so long to get an external drive.
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Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDME5000TN (Midnight Black).