That sux! I just finished modding my new laptop yesterday. 17" Acer Aspire, Pelican Case for transport, wireless mouse, external dvd drive (the installed one is crap), external 2 terabyte HDD, numerous HDMI/VGA/Composite video/audio adapters, flash drives, laptop cooling pad, etc.
I put it all together and realized "WTF? All this stuff equals more in weight and price then if I had just built a new tower PC!" LOL. I had to buy a luggage cart just to move all the shit around.
I'm also worried about losing back-up data, because Seagate externals don't have the best track record, but it was on sale. Two terabytes for $100, I'll accept the risk.
I'd recommend the Patriot Xporter XT flash drives for data back-up. Supposedly water proof and shock resistant ( although I haven't actually tested that claim yet).