The MUST-KNOWS you should know!

Looking for an external hard disk drive? Want to do your backups as easily as possible (instead of burning DVDs)? Well external magnetic disks are certainly easier to operate - plug in the cable, the OS senses the new drive, allocates it a drive letter and away you go... almost. Don't forget to make sure that you get the right drive for your machine (Firewire is great, USB2 is fab but check what you have first - and perhaps anticipate what you'll buy next year as well).

Examples include Maxtor One-Touch and LaCie - but here are some more in a CNET review.

Remember to make sure you get one that's compatible with the ports on your machine - PC owners would usually have USB rather than Firewire, so confirm a USB connection to the external HDD. If you have USB2 that's faster and better. Most of them will support USB2 (as well as USB1), so you should be fine.

You can search prices from my affiliates page here - and yes I get a commission if you buy via my links, and that helps me pay for this site! The computer stuff is waaay down the bottom, just click on the advert.

Also, Shopbot have a huge and confusing range of prices to compare. In any case expect to pay a minimum of about $A200 for about 100Gb, however it gets cheaper if you go bigger - relatively. Pay about $A250-$A300 for 200Gb for example. It depends on features, too. Read the box, check out the web reviews.

Or just use Google; or simply (in Australia, anyway) go to either a Harvey Norman computers franschise (not cool but works), or a small computer shop (like CDG at Erina, where I buy my PCs - just down the street from Harvey Norman in fact). Big chains like Harvey Norman will usually have them in stock and will haggle over price. So make sure you do that ;-)