External Hard Drive for Easy Backup

[Cubsfan]

My parents are looking for an external hard drive for backup, and I'm trying to find the one that's easiest to use. I use a couple of external drives with Ghost, but that's probably more than my parents want to worry about.

Anyone have any experience with any of the "one-touch" type drives, or any that come with nice, simple software?

[Jeffbx]

The Maxtor One Touch drives are very nice. I've bought a bunch of them for remote employees to back stuff up, and they seem pretty satisifed.

[Cubsfan]

The Maxtor One Touch drives are very nice. I've bought a bunch of them for remote employees to back stuff up, and they seem pretty satisifed.

Those were one of them that I was looking at. Do you know how the backup software works? Is it incremental, or does it just always keep a copy of your current drive? Also, do you happen to know what it does when it runs out of space?

[ray]

My cousin just got a WD My Book drive. Similar functionality as the Maxtor if i'm not mistaken. So far no problems.

[Jeffbx]

Those were one of them that I was looking at. Do you know how the backup software works? Is it incremental, or does it just always keep a copy of your current drive? Also, do you happen to know what it does when it runs out of space?

Yup, it's all configurable by the user. You decide whether to do a full, incremental or differential backup; at what interval; and what to do when the drive fills up - overwrite the oldest data or prompt the user for action.

It used to be bundled with Dantz Retrospect backup client - they were recently acquired by EMC so I dunno if that's still the software, but if not I'm sure it's something similar.

[Cubsfan]

Great, thanks guys. I'm just looking for the easiest solution for my parents so the amount of support I have to do is minimal :)

[MikeD]

Hey Cubsfan, I've got 3 of those drives at home. If you're looking at price and are interested in a used one, hit me up...we could probably work something out.

BTW, I'm with Jeff. Love the drives. That's why I have three. :)