The automatic copying thing isn't a standard feature of most external hard drives, although you can set it up in WinXP, I think, once a conventional drive is hooked in. I've seen some dedicated "backup" drives that are intended only for backup that may be setup to do it automatically. I suspect you'll want to RTFM - the material that came with the drive?

Keeping Media Player turned off in the presence of any music files is sort of a persistent p.i.a..

I looked pretty seriously at Dell quite recently, but decided I liked the choices offered elsewhere, and with the "special configuring" I wanted the price was pretty close. We have a replacement ordered for Lin's Win2K machine that's been having lots of old-age problems (i.e. crashed, smoked, sparked, burned, and self-destructed, taking network cards out on three other connected machines and probably blowing a monitor.). It's an excuse to get her off Win2K and onto WinXP. We're suffering from longer delivery time, because Dell and Gateway have cornered the mass market and none of the smaller producers can afford to keep stock on hand for immediate shipping, but we've been happy with our regular guys through 9 or 10 consecutive machines, so we expect something good in a couple of weeks.

I have whip and chair in hand to keep her (semi) docile until it gets here, and I let her on mine for brief intervals to check her email. She can play solitaire on the laptop, although she has to squint and rub her nose on the display to read the cards.

John