12-01-2007, 04:35 PM
Drives keep getting faster. Booting from an external is not going to seem any slower than booting from an internal. Seems dumb from an energy use perpective-- much better to keep your external turned off when not in use. Also a good way to make sure you don't accidentally start putting important things there that you end up losing when you back up.
I bought a 500 gb external to back up a 300gb internal, only about a month ago. Now my internal is almost full, and I would probably replace it with a 500gb, and my external will already be obsolete (you absolutely want a bigger drive to back up to-- never know when you might need to put something else on it for whatever reason).
I would say your backup drive should be at least 50% larger than the internal. Price differences are so miniscule now, if her internal was 80 GB, you wouldn't pay much more for a 500 GB backup drive than for a 100 GB drive (even if you could find the latter).
I bought a 500 gb external to back up a 300gb internal, only about a month ago. Now my internal is almost full, and I would probably replace it with a 500gb, and my external will already be obsolete (you absolutely want a bigger drive to back up to-- never know when you might need to put something else on it for whatever reason).
I would say your backup drive should be at least 50% larger than the internal. Price differences are so miniscule now, if her internal was 80 GB, you wouldn't pay much more for a 500 GB backup drive than for a 100 GB drive (even if you could find the latter).