Scotts Valley (CA) – You know you should be backing up the data on your PC at least once a week or so and we all know that most of us just don’t do it. Part of the reason is that backups are often a pain in the you know what and fairly complicated to handle, especially when you try to recover an entire PC. That task may be a lot easier with Seagate’s Replica drive, as it promises to back up everything on your PC. Yes, everything.
Conceivably, way too relaxed data backup habits on private computers may be one of the big time bombs just waiting to explode. What exactly is happening to those tens of thousands of treasured digital pictures and probably hundreds or thousands of MP3s and videos when your hard drive fails? Exactly. Not a pretty outlook when your entire digital life may be stored on a single drive.
If you are dealing with a data backup device already, then you know that such a drive and software typically does not let you back up all of your data. While you are able to safeguard your documents, images, videos and music, system folders are typically off limits, which means you will have to format your system, restore Windows and reinstall applications in a worst case scenario. However, Seagate’s Replica drive promises to back up everything on your PC, which will take the pain out of the reinstallation of applications.
The drive comes in two versions, 250 and 500 GB ($129 and $199, respectively) and can be used on either one (250 GB) or multiple computers (500 GB). The mainstream 5400 rpm drives connect to a PC via a 480 Mb/s USB 2.0 port.
From the press release: “With the Seagate Replica solution there is no need to spend time rifling through countless files, photos and folders to determine what has been or still needs to be saved; simply connect a single USB cable, click OK to the software license and the entire PC is backed up not just individual files and folders. After this simple action of accepting the software license, the Replica Backup System continues to run behind-the-scenes, so that no further interaction with the application is required.
Additionally, when the Replica backup appliance is left connected to the computer, it will perform a continuous and complete backup of everything so the computer is not left vulnerable between backup events as it would be with scheduled software.”
Of course, backing up everything on a relatively old PC may have its downsides as well, since you may carry over all that spyware and potentially viruses as well. So, you may still have to consider that thorough cleaning process of your PC from time to time.
