I have a 60 gig hard drive that i rescued from a dead computer, so i went out and bought a firewire case for it. (Background - we have an iMac DV+) Cost a hundred bucks for a nice case, but this thing can handle 5.25" drives as well. Anyway, i've never been happier. Since i got it, i partitioned it for music, docs, apps, swap, the only thing on my iMac's internal is X itself, along with libraries (everything else is aliased from other drives - desktop, etc). This way, if the computer ever dies, we can toss it and get another, without having to worry about data recovery. While you'll need a new computer eventually, an external FW drive is something you can take with you, which helps with that "copying expensive programs" problem as well. If you can afford it, go ahead and upgrade, but your computer has a lot of life left in it--
My recommendation: Get an external, a big one, and use it for everything. In the end, i think you'll be happy you did--
🙂
pnw