Backing up to external hard drive....

[Sunny Kate]

I’ve just bought a Western Digital My Passport Essential 500GB external hard drive to replace an older one with a much smaller capacity.
According to the manual I can install the accompanying WD Smartware Software which will allow automatic continuous back ups whenever the EHD is connected to the computer as well as drive lock password protection amongst other things.

I used the older EHD much as a flash drive for storage for copies of my docs, pictures and FH programs from my desktop computer running XP and had intended to do the same with this new one.

After reading the new manual I’m confused by all the pages of instructions re these initial backups, drive management and retrieval settings when all I really want is to have another safe copy of files etc that are important to me. I also intend using it for back ups to my laptop which runs Windows 7.

Usually I can find my way around most things on my computer but back ups have always confused me so would welcome any comments or suggestions about how I should/ could use the EHD.
Thanks, Kate

[Guy]

It depends whether you want to continue doing manual backups or whether you wish to allow the software to make automatic backups.

I prefer to make manual backups of my work rather than rely on a machine so I ignore all the automatic software and use my external drives simply as external drives.
This gives me full control of what I store and where and when I store it.

If you go for the automatic back up routine be sure the software can and does differentiate between the two computers otherwise you may find a backup of a file on one computer overwrites a later backup from the other computer.
Cheers
Guy

[Guest]

I have that and I also do manual back ups its so easy.

[Sunny Kate]

Val and Guy, thanks for your replies.

I've decided to stick with manual back ups as I'm more comfortable with having control as and where I want it. At least I know that way works for me.