External Hard Drive Questions

[hammieboy]

Hi everyone! I am new to this forum and I apologize in advance for my ignorance! I am a Newbie with a capital N!! :-)

Anyway, I am using PSE and ACDSee and I am going today to get an external hard drive for my laptop. I found a great deal on a 320 GB drive but I have no idea if that will suffice or if 500gb is a must.. . any opinions?

Also, I am using the 30 day free trial of ACDSee right now to try to learn it and after one day I love it! So cool . . . anyway, I read the post from the 6th regarding External drives, but I have another question or two . . . sorry if these were adressed and I was too dense to get it! I am not positive exactly how I am planning on using my IHD vs. my EHD but I do know that I want ACDSee on the EHD. Currently, I have it in my IHD and have begun organizing things there . . . is it simple to transfer all of this to the EHD as is? What I mean is, does the program itself (and all of its contents in the same folders) just get transferred over? And then, if it does, I can work with it on that external drive and just send over the items I am using for a layout to PSE on the laptop? Or I have everything on the laptop and on the external drive and use the EHD simply as a back up. I don't know whay I am so confused!! My laptop is new and it was a gift and I have no idea how much memory I have on this thing so I don't want to bog it down . . .

Thanks so much in advance!!

Kelley

[guitargirl]

I just use my EHD for backup. It's 120 GB, and I'm only using a small fraction of it right now.

[Teresa]

I have a 60 GB EHD velcroed to the lid of my laptop. I use it as if it were an IHD. Photoshop is loaded on there and everything scrapbooking related is on there. I have had no issues working from that EHD. My IHD is for the computer's utility files and for my work stuff. I also have a 120GB EHD in a safe that is used to back up everything a lot! I will back up everything to DVD's but not as often as I back up to my back up EHD. Hope that helps.

[hammieboy]

So I can load my Photoshop onto the EHD and work straight from there? Or I can load it onto the IHD and then pull in the pics and digital files from where they are stored on the EHD?