In order to have some piece of mind, I decided to purchase a external hard-drive to back up all my info on my PC> I purchased a Cavalry 500GB (Preformatted NFTS) USB 2.0 hard-drive with aluminum casing from newegg. It is a very nice piece.

My questions:
1.) Can hard drives be places in an upright position or should they stay in a horizontal position? This one has a removable stand, so I was wondering if placing in any other position will hurt it.
2.) Should I simply copy my entire "c: drive" or should I sift through and copy only folders? (documents, music, etc, etc)
3.) Is there a way to copy downloaded programs (like freeware?)

Any other tips? Thanks in advance.