Need Advice with Classic MBP hard drive.

[tMac85]

Ok so here is my question. I have a classic 2.4 MBP 160 4gb ect... I am a graphic freelance designer as well as a bit of a photographer. With Windows Vista partitioned and allllll of my design/ photo files my hard drive filled right up. I finally decided to put all my files on to my external, and basically cleared out my hard drive. ( sort of risky) My worry is, is that if my external goes crappy, I would loose all my files. So my question is, do I buy another external to back up that one or do I upgrade my MBP hard drive to say a 500Gb and move the files back over?

It sounds nice to have the files with me at all times, however I dont know if it is worth it to put the money into a 2 1/2 year old computer.
If I do go the route of upgrading the lappy, what is that looking to cost me for a 500gb 7200 rpm, and what brand???

Thanks again guys!

-tmac

 

[mac2x]

Always back up. Always. I know a person (who has an older Mac Mini with a 80 GB HD) who has 3 large external hard drives just for this purpose.

 

[airplaneman]

Get a 1TB drive and ask it to back up your external in Time Machine preferences (by default it will be in the "do not back up" category). I have this one; it's inexpensive and works really nice.

Seagate has a 7200RPM drive that has pretty good reviews selling at about $110 at newegg. You may also want to check out the 640GB or 500GB ($95) WD Scorpio Blues. I'm not sure which model your MBP is; those drives use SATA.

As for the "is it worth it" part; well, it depends on how long you want to keep your computer, basically. A decent upgrade will cost you around $100.

Hope this helps .