Well here's one thing you missed about Vista namely it's own ability to completely backup your pc and applications onto the external drive or another large capacity internal one.
To run a Complete PC backup, follow these steps:
1. Connect and turn on your external hard disk.
2. Click
Start, type
Backup, and then click
Backup and Restore Center.
3. Click
Back up computer.
4. On the Where Do You Want To Save The Backup page, click
On a hard disk, and then select your disk. Click
Next. Yes, you can backup your computer to DVDs if you have a writeable DVD drive, but it would take dozens of DVDs, and you’ll forget to do it on a regular basis.
5. Click
Start Backup. Windows Vista will work for quite some time… It’ll probably take hours.
If your hard disk every fails, or if you get hit by a spyware or virus and you can’t fix your computer, you’ll be able to restore your computer using this backup from the Backup And Restore Center.
http://www.vistaclues.com/backup-your-computer-and-applications/
That would be the actual best use for an external drive. Frequent backups is the most commonly heard advice to begin with. That protects anything important you have in case of some calamity.
