Dan - my PC (and my downstairs PC) both run on standard IDE cables, and only have the one slave connector, and I don't know how you run more than two HDD's in a PC anyway lol....

But I use my secondary/slave drive for all my MP3's, vids, movies, pics etc, and the main drive (C for the OS, and all the programmes and system files...

But, if my slave drive goes tits up and fails, I will lose all my shit - not good!

My downstairs PC only has one drive, and my old dear probably ain't interested in sticking another drive in it (she don't understand all this PC malarky) The main drive is a 40gb drive, and I checked it last night - it's only using 15.5gb anyway...

So all I was thinking was getting a largish drive to whack in a USB enclosure, back up what is needed off both PC's, and then just keep it in a draw - as in it won't be used unless I need to recover the date from a damaged drive etc...

How long can you keep data on a HDD without it being plugged into a PSU?