Appreciate all the advice,I have a western hard drive after taking a look and am running windows 7.When you say that Acronis is free do I have to have software to do a backup or does it just make it easier.Looks like I will be going to Reno tomorrow to check out Best Buy and see what they have.

 

If you have Win 7, then you have Windows Backup. That at least will get you started. Make sure to make a boot disk. As far as Acronis, if you purchased the WD disk yourself, then it should also have come with a software disk that would include Acronis. However, I do not know if that would be a full version that allowed backups to other than disk.

 

I've had Iomegas, Colorado tape drives, zip drives, jazz drives, all kinds of drives. But nothing was any better than the Passport using a USB port

 

You can download Acronis from WD's website. It's a partial version that only works with WD drives, and it only does full images and clones. It can do a clone to any other internal or external drive, and it can do images to any media that has enough free space for it.

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...19&wdc_lang=en

 

Thanks guys,appreciate the input.

 

I use Acronis, - Paid for version for all comps.