External Hard Drive For Backups

I have a Seagate Free Agent and it is always Red - back up failed. When I look at the logs, it is because it won't back up thumbnails, and other files with odd extensions (that are normal to PC geeks, but not to me). Since it won't back up those types of files, it's always telling me the back up failed.

Bob, I bought a Simpletech Signature Mini and it used to back up my drive with no problem. Now whenever I try to back up again, I get the 'blue screen of death' I have to reboot my PC. Can you tell what is wrong?

My concern with external drives is that they are always "ON". Reports of units with "Auto Shutoff" state that this function could be flaky. I currently use a 250Gb unit which is manually shutoff after use to prevent heat buildup. I wonder when 500Gb or 1Tb SSD will be available and at what price.

I have a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Pro, and apart from its sexy looks, the most important feature is by far the built-in eSATA connection. When used in conjunction with an eSATA cable and PC Card/ExpressCard (which can be plugged into most laptops i think), it provides a MUCH faster data transfer speed than USB.

The speed difference is almost like switching from a 56k dial-up connection to broadband, and with ever-growing hard drive capacities available, the USB bottleneck is increasingly apparent.

I agree that ones backup strategy should be revisited from time to time mainly because new hardware and software technology can improve backup security. Having been through all the usual methods: floppy disks, magnetic tapes, CD_Rs, CD_RWs and DVDs, I have found internal and external hard drives to be the least troublesome with the internal drive for convenience and external (off-site) drive for security. As far as
software is concerned I have found Acronis True Image 10 to be convienient to install, set up and use on a regular basis though I am aware of similar and equally reliable products. I find that backing up most of the contents of "Documents and Settings/myname" on a regular basis is sufficient. This I do to a file on a second hard drive build into my desk top which is fast. I then copy that file to an external removable drive via a USB connection. I do this having had experience of loss of data when sending the backup direct to the external drive. Because the full internal backup is fast I do not have to make incremental backups to cope with daily changes. Using the search facility in Windows and copying changed files to a memory stick deals with this problem.

Hi Bob,

I am a moderately capable PC user at best. I discovered your site today and read this article about backing up the entire hard drive of all files and operating system. I'm doing exactly as you recommend.

I have a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop. I have been doing automatic backups using Acronis True Image 10. The backups are going to a 1 TB Fantom external green drive. The external is my "G" drive.

I'm using Windows XP and for some reason I'm having some odd problems of application errors that are popping up on my main computer now for a couple programs. It isn't malware or virus but I can't seem to find how to fix it.

The computer was functioning well on October 23rd and a total system mirror image backup was done on that day. It's stored in the external. It totals almost 30 GB. I would like to revert my computer back to exactly how it was on October 23rd.

Could you please tell me how I do that? There is still another full operating system and files on my main computer's internal drive as well. Do I have to "wipe out" those files first somehow? Or will it just overwrite? It isn't that I can't use the computer as is. I just don't like some of the anomalies I'm having.

Could you please tell me how to send that full cloned backup BACK to my main PC without having two of everything or causing problems? Thanks very much.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Brad, you should be able to use Acronis to restore the full image backup to your hard drive. That will effectively wipe the disk and restore from the backup. A less drastic (and probably quicker) approach, would be to use System Restore. See http://askbobrankin.com/carter-lego.jpg

What about using Windows Backup to an external drive?

I have a Maxtor external 300MB HD that came with Retrospect Express. It was great until I bought a new desktop running Windows 7 (Was using XP) When I tried to install Retrospect, I got an compatability error. Version 1.1 came with the HD, and they are now up to version 9, which I am entitled to buy for $200+. The problem is that the Retrospect drivers overwrote something in Windows 7 and it wouldn't load ANY new programs. Fortunately, I had created an image before each new program install.
Dell offered to solve the problem for a $230 software service. Re-imaging was free. Good advice!! Thanks.

I picked up a 1 TB Western Digital My Book External hard drive for $109 (I almost went for the 8 TB device just to say I had an 8 TB drive), it included a trial of Memeo Backup software. I now do automatic real-time backups as files are changed. I've been happy and bought the paid version of Memeo. I haven't tried recovery yet but WD claims to be a bootable copy.

I bought a Western Digital Passport Essential 250GB back up drive and installed it in a friend's office. The WD is an incredible resource hog, using 90-95% of the CPU. My friend's HP Media Center desktop is about 3-4 years old. I had him increase RAM from 1GB to 4GB, the WD Passport is still hogging 90-95% of CPU. I wanted the easiest backup solution for him as they are not close to being IT Specialists. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be it. I'm going to travel there today to download some software patches from WD that allow the user to turn it off, rendering it no more a full time back up system. What is the Easiest back up solution for non-IT Specialists?