I'm aware of the risks. Now that WD have external 8GB My Book, when my internal gets about three quarters full, I'll just copy the files to the external My Book, using a program called Directory Opus. As far as getting hit with some encryption virus, I've only had that happen to me once, and I didn't need to pay someone to get my data back. I just used my laptop and google to get my computer to boot in safe mode, recover my data. Then do a low level format and I was able to use the drive again. I'm no guru, but I am good at finding answers. That's why im at MDLF...