[AT] OT - Disk cloning software

[Thomas O. Mehrkam]

What I purchased was the Western Digital External Media Center Drive 
120GB. It has a USB2.0 interface and a FireWire interface. It was about 
$145. I think it is cheaper now.

I needed to back up a Desktop and A Labtop. The desktop and laptop both 
had USB 1.0 ports. I purchased an Adaptec USB2.0/Firewire card for my 
laptop. At first I purchased an CompUsa brand and had problems. I 
exchanged that for the Adaptec brand. The backup software is good and I 
have been able to make backups of my laptop harddrive and my Desktop PC 
over the internet.

The drive will not work when connected directly to the desk top because 
of an old faulty USB chip on the motherboard. I have not replaced the 
USB interface so I just backup over the network.

USB 1.0 is slow so it takes many hours to backup using that interface. 
USB 2.O and firewire is much better but still not as fast as an internal 
drive. It takes about 2 hours to back up an verify the 20g drive on my 
laptop.

The backup software can make a emergency cdrom. This CDROM is bootable 
and will reload the OS and restore the backup in case of a hard disk 
failure.

120Gb is enough to back up both of my PC's. In addition I use it to 
archive my older digital photos. I put them on CD roms and also archived 
them on the 120Gb drive. That way I have two copies on different media 
in case one fails I always have the other. The has a card reader for 
compact flash etc. About six formats in all. I can read most any compact 
flash card used in Digital cameras or PDA's

A word of warning You need quality cables for USB2.0 or Firewire. The 
onns that came with the drive are garbage and had to be replaced with 
quality cables.

All and all it is an acceptable solution.

Be sure you have Win98 or better and a good USB port. If you have an XP 
machine with a USB 2.0 port it works great. USB  1.0 is very slow.