I teach technology, so, my needs may be a little different than your own. However, there are a lot of times when my students or myself need to transfer files. Now, sometimes a flash drive is quite sufficient for moving around documents, pictures, etc. However, in my courses we sometimes move around ISOs or we backup entire directories full of files. After a certain size flash drives get really expensive.

So, my solution is simple.... I often get computer "leftovers" either PCs that don't work or are just too old to use. I usually just buy several inexpensive external drive enclosures and rip the hard drive out of these dinosaurs! Sometimes the drive sizes are pretty small, but hey, I'm not buying the drive....

Removing the drives usually makes for an interesting activity for my classes and it gives me some portable storage. The install process for these things usually just involves putting the new drive in the enclosure and attaching power to it. From there just attach it to your new PC and wow, you've got storage. As a side note, if you've got an old laptop lying around, pulling the drive from that one will give you an external storage device that usually doesn't require an external power source.

Oh, and don't forget too that a lot of MP3 Players also can be used as external drives as well. That's why I bought my iPod!! You've got to love a multi-tasker!

Geek Note:
Chances are your new drive will be mostly full from the PC it came from. Yes, you can just delete everything on the drive, but, it's even easier to just reformat the drive so you've got all the space on the drive just for you. Once you've put the drive in the enclosure and plugged it into Windows, you can run the FORMAT command to reformat the drive. You'll probably want to format the drive as FAT32 so that it can be used in any machine: Linux, Macintosh, Windows 98, Windows XP, or even Vista. You'll need to open up a command prompt.

Click on the Start button and choose Run...

Now, open up My Computer and see what is the drive letter that is assigned to your new drive. Once you've got that, type the command format e: /fs:FAT32 in the command prompt window. I'm assuming here that "e" is you're drive letter. If it's anything else, change the "e" to whatever your letter is.

You'll be warned that all of the data on your disk will be lost. Just type Y to agree and wait a few. After a while you will have a new external storage device. For more information on the format command in Windows XP go here.