I bought an external hard drive 500 gig for under $100. About once every couple months I back up my laptop to it. That way if anything happens to the laptop I have all the files on the hard drive. I plan on organizing my embroidery files by type and placing on dvd instead of cd (dvd holds more) for use on my laptop that is in my sewing room. It is easier moving a dvd upstairs than it is unplugging and moving the hard drive. Its not that big but the plug is difficult to get to. Any files that I am actually using I put on a memory stick that can go directly into my machine. (Topaz 20)