Windows 10: External hard drive . I need advice

I just bought an external hard drive and it has their software . So my question is should I use their software or use what I already have on my computer .
what happens if I clean that drive of all software or do I have to learn all that stuff from the drive manufacture?
and what last question which program is best for backups and image O S ?
thank you for all answers

:)

 

saving and viewing files on an external hard drive

I recently just got a new laptop that has windows 10 and I have an external hard drive from when I had a mac. I need this external hard drive for my college classes and I cannot access any of the files or save any new files to it. I do not need the old
files btw. I also cannot format the hard drive from my computer, I may be able to but I cannot find the option to. Any advice would help, thank you.

 

DVD-CD Player

Dear Niranjan,

I have un-install the Seagate external hard drive and then re-install again. The drive does not show on device manager anymore.

This external hard drive must be too old to work with window 10. I will check with Seagate.

Thanks for your advice,

Tommie Mak

 

All great questions: We need more information on the external HDD....like the brand/make/model number. Or a link to the actual drive itself. Also what is the drive going to be used for.

 

I have 2 external drives 1 is a western digital 1 gig and the other is a 4 gig Seagate, The software on both of them did not interest me so I got rid of it.

 

sorry about that I was reluctant to name the brand .
It's a western digital My passeport Ultra 2 Tb
I plan to use it to store pics and family videos and backup and image my 2 laptop windows 10 systems 1 a Toshiba 32 and a more recent Dell 64 system

 

For what it's worth I have 2 WD 2TB Element models. Both are used bot "Backup" and storage. Deleted the software off both and haven't looked back. I did reformat one of them.

 

So you can wipe out everything on the drive without any issues?

 

I've done it twice and NO issues.

 

thank you that's what I want to know .
I don't like to use different software to do the same job it takes space . that's my point

 

Many people on the forum like me use the excellent program Macrium Reflect Free. There is also a paid for version if you need more features.

 

thank you all
I'll do that

 

Hi,
As far as macrium reflect all one needs is the recovery cd/ flash media or winpe recovery media to be able to create or restore a system image
I've been using it primarily to create and recover system images for nearly a year
Best to get familiar with the recovery process you will eventually have to use it *Biggrin
Create Backup Image with Macrium Reflect by Britec - YouTube

One quirk with creating a system image in the recovery environment is one needs to create a folder on the hdd you want the image to be on first.

 

I have been inspired by this forum to get serious about my backup and now have macrium backups on my internal hdd inside my computer. I had tried many times with paragon software which was just too confusing for me. It wasn't cheap software either!

The macrium backup tutorial here made it a piece of cake.

One query, if you utilize an external drive for extra backup purposes only, to store remote from primary location....

Do you just copy and paste the image files to the usb3 external drive or should you use the macrium software to produce the images to the usb3 external drive every time?

I guess there is no verification process with basic cut and paste...

I would like to do macrium incrementals daily and about once a fortnight bring the external harddrive home, copy all the macrium images and then take back to store at work...

 

Along with a legitimate "backup" I also run a two-step Batch File with XCopy and the /v/s/m/y switches set to copy my data files that have the Archive bit set to my Ext HDD on the first step. The /m switch turns off the Archive bit for these files.

Step two then copies those same files from the Ext HDD to a Flash/Stick using the same switches.

Having "native" file copies allows me to take these files to any other machine without having to have backup software installed on that machine and needing to do a restore to access them. Admittedly this may sound like overkill, but I've learned by experience over the years that "things DO go bump in the night".

Maybe I ought to have a tag line:

I am NOT paranoid.
Why are you people all against me?