[brian1942]

I bought a 2TB Seagate Replica HD to back up my PC which on the face of it would seem to be perfect for me but not so :-

1 Drasticaly slowed my computer down
3 I have only got a 500gb hard drive installed in my PC but the Seagate is 3/4 full ..WHY?..
4 It takes ages to access any files that I have backed up


I have tried using Seagate support site and trawled the internet for answers but I cannot make sense of anything on the Seagate site I have never come across such an obscure and unhelpful site and this seems to be the general opinion from my searches

So my question is how do I erase and format the drive so that I can use it with another back up program, please understand that I am not a Techie so please relay instructions in laymans terms

Thankyou in anticipation

[LincolnSpector]

Hi, Brian.

This is a USB 2.0 external drive. USB 2.0 is much slower than the SATA connection your internal drive uses. So it's not surprising that your system would slow down when it's accessing the Replica. And judging from the Replica's web site (I've never used this model, myself), it's accessing it all of the time.

Even then, if the software is well-written, it shouldn't be slowing down your PC. It would simply copy the files when needed, preferably during idle time. But then, I don't know if the software is well-written.

In general, I disapprove of backup solutions that involve having the backup drive plugged into the PC 24/7. The idea, of course, is that you back up constantly, and you don't have to think about it. The reality is that your backup is almost as vulnerable as your main storage (the same power surge, Trojan, or burglar could deprive you of both).

Try this: Unplug the drive (safely, of course) and leave it unplugged. At or near the end of your work day, plug it in, and see what happens. I'm assuming that the Replica's software has some way of telling her (perhaps in a systray icon) that it is backing up and that it's done backing up. If it starts backing up when you plug it in, and lets you know that it's finished, you don't have to keep it installed all of the time. Just plug it in at the end of the work day to make yourself a backup.

Or use the drive with another backup program.

I have no idea why your drive is so full. Of course the backup program saves multiple versions of files, but it's unlikely that you change that many files that often to nearly fill the drive so soon. You should be able to figure out what's going on simply by opening the drive in Windows Explorer and inspecting the contents.

Lincoln