Backing up several drives to external drive

I just bought a Seagate 300GB external drive.

In an effort to finally get rid of my four old computers, I want to save a lot of the info on their various hard drives to the 300GB drive.

The computers are: 1. P-4 1.6Ghz C: 40GB drive (about 8GB used) 2. P-3 500Mhz C: 8GB drive, D: 40GB drive 3. P-120 C: 1GB drive, D: 8GB drive parbreastioned in to four 2GB drives, no USB port 4. 386DX C: 300MB drive, no USB port

So, there are six drives that have info I want to move to the 300GB drive, and then I want to use this drive as the regularly scheduled backup drive for a new computer that is arriving as a Christmas present.

Can I just create folders on the 300GB drive, and do a one-time transfer of data from each of the old drives to those folders,.. then start using this drive for periodical backups on the new computer?

What is the best way to get the info from the drives on computers 3 and 4 with no USB ports?

Thanks for any help.

Lew