all this chatter about hot/cold weather forces me to make this post..

i live in NJ and garage my car overnight and unliss i am uploading some songs never take the empeg out of the car...reading all this makes me wonder exactly how much i have shortened the life span of my drives and how can i figure it out..

presently my 50gb are pretty much fully utilized and i would need to upgrade to a larger drive anyways...

having said all that is there anyway i can back up the music on my empeg directly onto another HDD without that HDD being installed in another device? I would like to do this so i dont run the risk of having my HDD blow out without having a back up..then when i need to swap out drives i already have all my tunes on a drive that can be immediately installed

(yes i do have all my tunes on my desktop...but i am just looking to take a short cut)

thanks,

Ed