Toshiba HDDR320E04EL_CS 320GB USB Portable External Hard Drive (McAfee Internet Security, Password Protection, Encryption, Blue)

Nice drive... TERRIBLE software!
I write this having lost all my data over the weekend...

Word of warning - the "NTI Backup EZ Now" software will NOT help you if you decide to re-install Windows yourself.

Here's the problem. When you backup to the drive the NTI software creates a compressed file of its own format. To restore just the files and folders, you need the software on your newly-formatted computer. BUT when you install the software it AUTOMATICALLY STARTS A NEW BACKUP! So, your old files get over-written immediately, and the new installation does not recognise the old restore points.

Before this catastrophe, the over-keen software had already started a backup onto my MP3 player (assuming it was an external drive).

Thankfully I no longer use the machine for work, and most of our personal stuff is held on memory cards and CD.

Otherwise, the drive itself is easy to use and well enough made - a little plasticky, but compact and robust.

Just DON'T...

Toshiba HDDR320E04EL_CS 320GB USB Portable External Hard Drive (McAfee Internet Security, Password Protection, Encryption, Blue)

A nice little USB powered backup drive
I'm a fanatical backer upper and this 320Gb Toshiba looked ideal for holding multiple data backups - I like having a series of older backups just in case and all our music, photos etc now take up 60Gb and growing. With this drive I'll be able to keep 4 or so generations of data backups. I also synchronise our desktop and laptop data and emails across the local network and mirror the system partitions to another external drive - and backup photos etc online.

The Toshiba drive looks good, is pretty small and gets its power through the single USB plug - no separate power block or 2nd USB plug. I plugged it in and Windows 7 quickly sorted out the drivers. On the disk is a 458 page pdf manual but luckily only the first 20 are in English. The main thing to remember is to safely remove the drive in Windows (so it parks its read/write heads away from the data area). Strangely the manual says the drive is only for Windows XP or Vista. Well it's fine with Windows 7, although I didn't...

Toshiba HDDR320E04EL_CS 320GB USB Portable External Hard Drive (McAfee Internet Security, Password Protection, Encryption, Blue)

toshiba 320gb external hard drive
Received this hard drive and was able to plug it in and transfer my files across without any issue at all via the usb port. Accessing files from it is like it was as quick as if it was an internal drive.

Its a sleek little piece of equipment that sits nicely beside my laptop unobtrusively.

Does what it says it does

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