I purchased two external hard drives last year during the "back to school sales". I copy everthing to both. One, I work off, by just transferring the designs I want to use. The other is at my best friends house, just in case my house goes up in flames. When I buy or download new designs, I copy those to a USB thumb drive and transfer those to the hard drive at her house. We do not live very far apart. She does the same thing, keeping one at my house.