External hard drives have really dropped in price. I picked up my 250 gig model for $80. That's cheaper than some knives I've looked at. It backs up all my photos, papers, documents, programs, plus all my music. On the downside, it does need to be plugged into an outlet to work. I'm considering getting a smaller model (60 gigs), that just needs to hook into my laptop, to store my most important documents. Something more portable I can throw into a waterproof case and run.