procol

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Ok, I got a brand new Seagate 400gb pushbutton backup external harddrive. The instruction booklet really isn't written for the less-computer-literate in the community, but I did get the AC power source hooked into the adaptor which hooks into the ext. hd, and have used the (recommended by the booklet) usb 2.0 cable & not the Firewire cable as I use Windows XP from the ext hd to my comp. I did get the little messages saying my computer recognized new hardware installed & new hardware ready to use.

Now the hard part for me is the next section of the instructions which relates to

1.installing drivers - apparently done as XP has built-in up to date drivers

2. reformatting - ext hd drive is formatted for FAT32 but if I want NTFS (do I? - see next sentences) I have to reformat. My intentions for this new ext hd are to move my movies, music & vids off my c-drive, so that the ext hd is doing the work of what my beleagured c-drive has been doing.

My c-drive is NTFS so do I have to reformat the new ext-hd from FAT32, or can I move the pics, movies, & music from c-drive to ext hd (drive f) without problems. I would also envision moving files from ext hd back to c-drive for various projects, so would that present problems moving from a not-reformatted FAT32 ext hd back to the NTFS c-drive at a later date....

3. partitioning - advice?

4. Ext hd device has this built-in "BounceBack Express" function that "allows you to automatically copy files from your harddrive to your external drive" (I'd rather just move stuff from one to the other", as well as relating to doing backups & such - I have questions for which I may just have to contact Seagate for answers, but any advice?

procol

because I say so

elfoozo

.
1) Since you can see the drive, you are right, XP installed all the drivers you need.

2) You do not need to reformat to go from fat32 to ntfs. You can use the MS included convert.exe command line utility.

3) Re-partitioning is a matter of personal preference. I left my 750 GB as one big partition.

4) I prefer robocopy because it has logging, can run with the task scheduler, etc.

procol

Thank you: that helps quite a bit. The thing comes with this disk utility cd, and I wanted to get some bearings before I did something I would find later I didn't want to do.

iwantenzo

Well... you have installed.
You really don't need to convert it to NTFS. XP can read both FAT32 and NTFS.
But if in the future, you want to hook this external HDD to linux, it would better if you left it as FAT32 (read-write access).
I have always found that its a good practice to make at least two partitions.. you can keep high priority stuff on one and low priority on the other .. makes life simpler ...

CWB

right ...

you don't need to reformat to ntfs ... ntfs is a more effcient way to stash data . i would say it is ok/preferable to do so as the drives/data in your machine are already ntfs . there was/is an issue involving the conversion from fat32 to ntfs and vice versa (not formating but the actual files themselves) ... i remember reading something about it a few years ago ... in the XP install setup there is a blurb about this .

leaving the drive unpartitioned is ok .
personally , i find it easier to keep track of a single drive/letter rather than go "lemme see here ... X&Y are on this drive ..." . you can make folders 'till the cows come home . one less partition is one thing less to go wrong .
if you have more than one swapable external drive it is easy to backup what you deem your "critical data" to a dedicated (and possibly smaller/cheaper) drive and stash it ... this lowers the usage of that drive and helps in preseving the integrity of that data .
one can also have a pluggable "junk drive" to grab and run to another comp to quickly transfer large filesets .

some data is ok to automatically backup ... working on documents and such as that ... just ask anybody that has lost a couple hours work revising documents/paperwork/quickbook files etc etc .
i prefer to manually copy what i deem to be needed outside of the above criteria .

MightyZeus

I bought a Seagate 300G drive a few months ago so I could backup files
before reformatting my laptop.
I installed the given software and proceeded to backup a few folders.
This took FOREVER using the software.
After formatting, I did NOT reinstall the package and all is good.
Moving files to the HD are no problem and seems to work faster/better IMO.
I did convert to NTFS however as a preference.

I just love that I have a place to put my "stuff" on and keep
the laptop HD cleaned up.

Zeus

P.S. The only "problem" I see is, I might want another one soon!!!

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