That's the sound of me backing up...well, I already backed up, but the "beep beep beep" sound is still in my head. Come to think of it, it was in my head a LONG time before I even got a computer.
Yup, I found my brand new but year old external hard drive and hooked it up. Was really easy, just plugged it in, nothing to install. It took a little while, but I copied almost* all the stuff I wanted to the HD; my photos, my music, my porn and nearly everything else.
*I say almost because I couldn't copy a folder; it's my "work" folder I keep on my Desktop. I create a folder each month, like "Dec-10" and save everything for that month in it, then after the month is done, I create another and drag the previous month's folder into the current one. After trying several times and getting an error message, it dawned on me that I must have met some limit imposed by Windows, either the number of nested folders or perhaps maxing out the length of a file name due to that. Doing a little research, I found there is a limit of 65,536 entries in a directory--that's what I found, whether that's the problem could be debatable.
What's not debatable is I am a cyber-pack rat, saving nearly everything and seldom throwing the stupid stuff away. (which is nearly all of what I save)
Whatever, I got my stuff saved now. Whew. I would've hated to have lost my photos, although the "best" have been uploaded to Picassa. What would've made me sick would have been losing my music, especially the six different versions of "It's a Long Way to the Top (if you want to rock and roll)".