Oh yes, if nothing more than to backup. I didn't do this with my previous computer and lost everything I had saved for years. Music, pics, documents, games, you name it, all gone. I was able to recover pretty much all of the music from friends, but all my pics and docs were gone. Once I switched to my MBP, that was one of the first things I bought was a nice little 500 GB Western Digital, even matches my MBP and that was just a concidence. Best money I have spent on a peripheral ever. You wont regret it when your HD crashes.