Seagate Replica
Product: Seagate Replica Multi-PC (as reviewed)
Website: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/replica/
Specifications: 500GB, 5400RPM, 2.5-inch external hard drive, USB 2.0, 114mm x 143mm x 50mm, 570g
Price: Single-PC 250GB £89.99, Multi-PC 500GB £119.99
MAC USERS may have many reasons for feeling superior to their Windows counterparts, but there is one for which some smugness is justified - backups.
With Leopard's Time Machine, Apple turned the technology that normally makes you worry about such dull stuff as schedules and cycles into a tool you turned on and forgot about, safe in the knowledge that your important stuff is being saved without any further intervention.
Windows Vista, on the other hand, doesn't even include a backup option in its Home editions and while Windows 7 will address this, Microsoft has made little attempt to update its utility for the 21st century.
So, step forward Seagate and its Replica backup 'appliance'. The box promises "Connect, Click, Back up, Relax" and while no mention is made of Time Machine, it's clear that this was the model for this simplified approach to saving your files.
The Seagate Replica is an external hard drive that plugs into a USB port. There are two models and while both use 5400RPM 2.5-inch drives inside a plastic caddy that's a little larger than the firm's Expansion portable drives, they serve different needs. The 'Single PC' model has a 250GB capacity and is intended, obviously, for use with one computer. The 'Multi PC' has 500GB, a stand that lets you mount the drive vertically and it can be used with multiple computers, though it can only be plugged into one at once.
Installing either model is about as simple as it gets - just plug it into a USB port and run the set-up program that the Windows AutoPlay dialog box presents. Next, well, there is no 'next' - once the brief software installation is complete, there's nothing else to do. A blue LED on the Replica pulses to show that the drive is plugged in and, if you're interested, the Replica utility in the Windows Notification Area shows when backups are in progress. You don't need to choose which files to back-up, nor specify when backups are made - it's all automatic.
Once installed, the Seagate Replica software runs in the Notification Area and shows how many files are being backed up at any one time. A Windows Explorer extension lets you check a file's backup status by hovering the mouse pointer over it.
For many people who wouldn't otherwise bother with backups, this black box approach works very well, but it does create a few issues.
The Replica's first backup takes some time - about an hour for 16GB of data on our PC - and there's no noticeable performance hit. Subsequent 'snapshots' are much quicker and although Seagate doesn't say, this suggests that the Replica relies upon some version of Rsync to record just the changes to files rather than make fresh copies of entire files each time.
By default, the Replica backs-up the whole C: partition, but there's no way to exclude folders from the process - you'll need to move them to another drive if you don't want them taking up back-up space. Some wastage is unavoidable though, since the Replica backs up temporary files and caches whether you want it to or not.
You can add additional partitions to the backup, but again, it's the whole partition or nothing. There's also no way to trigger a backup manually and while the Replica is quick to detect changes, there's still a window of about a couple of minutes where files are unprotected.
As befits a foolproof backup device, restoring files with the Replica is also very simple and there are three options, depending on what you need to recover. Hover the mouse pointer over a file in Windows Explorer and a pop-up shows the number of versions saved so far, together with the time and date of the most recent. Right-click a file and the 'Seagate Replica' option on the context menu lets you open any of the saved file versions in their associated application. For files other than documents, you can opt to "Browse in Seagate Replica", at which point a window opens with all saved versions of the file.
The Replica Browser - essentially an Explorer view of the Replica back-up - can also be opened by double-clicking the icon in the Notification Area, but this isn't quite the same as that "Browse in Seagate Replica" menu option. This just shows the most recent backup of all files, with no way to access earlier versions and this has the potential to confuse the newbies that this device is aimed at.
More troublesome still is that neither option offers a one-click restore - you need to drag, or copy and paste, the file you're recovering back to the appropriate folder on the original partition. This is hardly a chore, but it's another strange choice for such a supposedly simple back-up system.
Recovering an entire C: partition means booting the PC with the supplied recovery CD. This launches a Linux environment that lets you choose a snapshot from the Replica, since the most recent backup may not be the one you want to restore, before cloning it back. This worked perfectly for us and took about the same amount of time as the Replica's initial full back-up.
It's a pity that this recovery process needs a boot CD, though - it would make more sense to boot directly from the Replica itself. Admittedly, not all PCs can boot from a USB device, but it's been a common BIOS setting for some time and the option could be in addition to the boot CD.
In Short
Although not everyone will appreciate its wholly automatic approach, the Seagate Replica is an ideal solution for people who wouldn't usually bother with back-ups. It needs a few tweaks to make it perfect and the 500GB model may not even be enough for one PC, let alone two or more, but it's still the easiest Windows back-up solution we've ever seen. µ
The Good:
Idiot-proof backups, maintains file version history.
The Bad:
File restore options need refining, capacities may not be enough for all PCs.
The Ugly:
Can't exclude folders from backups.
Bartender's Report:
8/10
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These things are not new.
I've owned USB backup external drives from Western Digital, Ez, Diskgo, Seagate Freeagent, etc..
Guess what?
Every single one of the bloody blighters at some point when I least expected, failed beyond any recovery, reducing themselves to an impenatrable black box. ALL OF THEM.
Definitely NOT there when needed. And they failed on various PC's, desktops and laptops.
Do yourself a favor.
Buy an internal HDD (Veloceraptor, or like)
And save yourself the disappointment, denial, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, and rip-off.
I shall never buy, nor rely on another external USB HDD. And why keep shoving money down their stinkhole?
The only way to keep your data secure is to get involved, be consistent, be committed to the task, and backup to multiple media types on a regular basis. The job stinks but you got to do it. The proper tool to use is the one that you are most likely to use the most often. I back up to flash, DVD, second and third internal hard drive, USB hard drive and off site storage.
Being an old DOS programmer of sorts and having limited "mission critical" data now days, most of my backups use the copy and/or xcopy function in Windows; corporations have different problems. I do use NTBackup, but a true backup requires a true restore and that can be a royal PITA. A series of DOS copies (run from the Task Scheduler via batch files) are immediately usable by MS Office or whatever. Sometimes a bit slow, but then I'm asleep, or taking a break, so it doesn't matter. And oh yeah, he who puts all his data on a single Terabyte drive is simply planning for a disaster. He who has single drives of any sort for his source data and data backup is just fooling himself. And he who trusts technology alone to save his data is simply a fool.
Computers are like babies. You have to feed them the right stuff and on a regular basis you have to clean their smelly behinds.
um, this actually works almost the same way in that it backs up the whole system, except that the backup software has to be installed, but does boot from usb..http://www.hantechnology.com.sg/shop_online_home.php?user=1&categoryID=10
it supports vista now. their product page is not updated..
I've set up an airport extreme with a usb key and time machine at my mums house. Already saved them once and it took at most two minutes to set up.
Mac's had this for almost three years, why doesn't Windows 7 have this functionality built in?
"The only way to keep your data secure is to get involved, be consistent, be committed to the task, and backup to multiple media types on a regular basis."
Yup, dead right, but that's the whole point — few home PC users can be bothered to go through this kind of palaver.
A single-drive backup may not be ideal, but it's better than nothing and the amount of effort required to set-up the Replica (and the similar Time Machine) is so minimal is that if you're currently not doing any kind of backup (and yet still have data you *should* be backing up), then it's foolish not to use something like this.
As for the reliability of an external USB drive, well, I can't comment on that other than to say I've been using them for many years with no problems (there's no alternative with laptops). If the Replica does fail, then it's just a 2.5in SATA drive inside a case and there's nothing to stop you prising it apart and plugging the bare drive into something else to get at your data.