Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

fast, secure, easy software - very happy customer
Software easy to set up - even for the IT illiterate - and not mandatory if you do not want to use it; 5 yr Seagate guarantee worth something to me as I don't want the back up drive to fail; About as fast as USB 2 allows; First back up took ages but subsequent runs much faster as it updates changed files; Keep it unplugged and away from your machine and you have inexpensive "off-site" backup.

Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Better known as Secret Agent than FreeAgent...
Yes nowadays people are obsessed with the size of their Hard Drives, yet few have ever filled them up completely!
Hence the reason I opted for a cheaper 500Gb drive, my internal drive is also 500Gb so in total 1Tb is very sufficient.

Non-PC types may find that some reading is required to adjust the preferred way of backing up or syncing files.
Persons familiar with iTunes should fully understand the 'sync' method of backing up.

Basically there are two options:

1. Backup (Makes a complete backup of the system and subsequent backups will copy only files that don't already exist). If you delete files on the PC the same files will remain on FreeAgent.

2. Sync (You setup which folders you want your PC to 'watch', they are copied to FreeAgent like a backup, however the difference is that any changes to the watched folders performed locally ie. on your PC, will result in FreeAgent carrying out the same procedure. For example, on the PC...

Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Seagate FreeAgent Desk 500GB - Fast and works well
Whilst this external hard drive can be used to perform regular back ups using the included software I bought it to store things like photos that I don't want to lose or delete by mistake and also to store a back up image of my hard drives - should the worst happen.

Easy to connect up, comes with a two pin and three pin power adapter and a quick start guide. Just connected up the usb lead and the power and it installed itself automatically - pretty simple stuff. Initial image back up of my 320Gb system using Seagate's DiscWizard took less than an hour and a half.

Good enough for me and the 5 year guarantee gives real peace of mind.

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