Customer Reviews

Seagate Replica 500 GB Complete Multi-PC Backup System with Dock ST905004BDA101-RK (Silver)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

An exercise in frustration. Recommended mostly for people who do not want to know what their computer is doing, or who do not even take any basic care regarding data security. Great for a family member or a friend who never backs up, but calls you when things go wrong.

The Seagate 500GB Replica drive tries hard to bring the ease of backup that Apple has provided with their Timeport software/hardware combo to the Windows based computers. In other words backup of your computer should be handled pretty much without user intervention until you need help with a crash, or want to recover a file that you accidentally deleted. The Replica promises to do this, for multiple computers, by keeping not only the entire drive backed up (Within limitation of the 500GB total capacity, the files do not appear to be compressed), but also as many different versions of changed files as will fit on the drive. When the drive fills up, the oldest of multiple files are deleted first. Restoring individual files is handled thru integration with Windows Explorer. A right mouse click will now show a Seagate Replica icon, which will allow you to browse the backup drive and selective restore as many versions of the file in questions as were backed up.
Restoring the entire drive entails booting your crashed computer with a supplied recovery disk by using the computer's bios "boot from cd rom function". This disk contains enough software to allow the dead computer to communicate with the Replica Drive and to restore it. Periodically Seagate recommends that you check their website for a new Iso image of the recovery disk.

OK, that's the background and it is supposed to work. Here is my personal experience:

Out of the box you get a shiny dark silver small (about 6x4x3/4") drive with a machined Seagate spiral Logo. It looks very classy. There is only one connector, a mini USB (solo cable and a docking cable are included). Upon plugging the drive in, it is detected as a USB mass storage device. This drive contains about 150mb worth of backup software. At this point you CAN use it as a conventional extyernal drive.

Installing the backup software took only a few minutes, afterwards a box pops up to let you know that "Seagate Replica is protecting your computer" The instructions say that initially this can take up to several hours.

So I left the computer on, with the nice blue ligh on the drive flashing for overnight. I have about 100 gig woth of stuff with photos, music, spreadsheets, and word files.
Next morning I fully expected the 100,000 files to have been fully backed up. But no, apparently the Replica only cataloged my drive. When I cliced on its icon in the tray, that is when it actually started to back up the drive. A few hours later it was down to only 80,000 files left.
Seagate warns you that the computer might get sluggish with the backup drive working and they tell you to turn off any Antivirus software as it may double the backup time. I did this, but web browsing was still slow, and I wound up temporarily right click safe disconnecting the drive.

When in use the Replica runs four processes for over 75mb of memory used. When disconnected this drops to 3 processes and about 20mb ram used. When done with the web I reconnected the Replica, and went away for about 12 hours. When I came back there was still about 10,000 files to go. I came back another couple of hours later and we were down to 800 files. Wow, I actually wanted to see it go to zero, kind of like mesmerized watching of the defrag software doing its stuff.

Well it never got down to zero! It jumped up to 1800! It would do this continuously, get down to about 500-1000, then jump up to about 2000. Apparently enough system files get changed and Replica wants to catch EVERY single change. You have absolutely NO control of how often, or which files to monitor for change.

Consequently if you leave the Replica plugged in all the time, your computer will be constantly running sluggish (your antivirus may be off from previous directions which is bad as well) and the little Replica will be busily clicking and whirring away. Possibly accelerating the hard drive crash that you were trying to protect against in the first place.

This is a major problem. The software needs to allow the user some control, even if it is thru a expert only mode. Until then I will only use it as a conventional backup drive. The software does allow you to reset the drive and delete all of the data if you want to free up the space.

Finally, it does allow you to backup all of the family computers in one place, but you have to install the bloatware software on every machine. If you don't, the new computer can stop the software installation at a "browse only" point. This allows you to see all of the backed up files stored on the Replica so far, and get access to only a couple as needed. I cannot confirm this, as each time when I tried this, I only got to see the file structure briefly, then the host computer would lock up and require rebooting.

The instructions say that if you do back up several computers, files which are common to more than one machine will only be backed up once. That is an advantage, since at least many system files are common, as may be any multimedia.

So to summarize: Replica is large capacity USB powered backup drive for multiple computers. The hardware works well. The software lacks crucial controls to allow user control of how often and which files to backup. My version after an online update is dated 4/10/09 VER 3.0768.5345. Without this control the drive runs constantly. I will not be using the mulicomputer capability untill this software is fixed. The memory footprint is ridiculously large. The browse feature from other computers is buggy. Until the software is fixed I will only use it in the conventional external drive mode. On my dual core XP SP3 computer having the Replica continuously run in the background makes every application feel slow. Fortunately all the problems should be fixable thru a software update, now we just have to wait for it.

To save some folks time - if you are using anything other than Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, this is not the backup solution you are looking for and you can stop reading now.

My first exposure to the Seagate Replica was when my 75-year-old mom asked me if it was an appropriate backup device for her. When I bought her PC a few years ago, I had it configured with a mirrored hard drive plus Norton Ghost to do regular backups. But she found Ghost too confusing (I agree - I prefer Acronis True Image) and I had bugged her about the importance of doing regular backups in case of disaster or even the accidental deletion of an important file. I had urged her to look for an external hard disk with built-in backup software, and she ran across the Replica and asked me if it would work for her.

At the time, Amazon was not yet selling the Replica so I looked up some reviews and decided that it looked like a good bet for her and bought one for her. A few days later, she sent me an email exclaiming how easy it was to use and she was delighted with it. Well, easy to use is no help unless it really provides protection you can use, so when I was offered the chance to review a Replica for Amazon, I was thrilled.

First Look

The Replica is deceptively simple looking. The basic 250GB unit is a small, lightweight device which is silver on the rounded front and has a rubberized flat bottom - that model just comes with one USB cable and is intended for a single PC. The 500GB model which I tested comes with a dock that the Replica proper slides onto; the dock has its own USB cable with two plugs (more on that in a moment), plus an additional USB cable that is handy for use with other PCs. Also included is a CD that is NOT an install disc but rather an emergency rescue disc, and a small instruction leaflet. (An ISO image of the rescue CD can be downloaded from Seagate's web site should you lose it.)

The dual-plug USB cable may be confusing. The main plug (at the end of the thick cable) is the primary USB connector for power and data. A second USB plug comes off a short, skinnier cable and is embossed with "Power Only" on the bottom. The idea is that some PCs may not provide sufficient power from a single USB jack and the second one plugs into a second jack to get additional power. The only reference to this in the instructions is the tiny diagram showing both plugs connected to a PC. In reality, you may not need both - I didn't on either of the systems I tested it with, but it can't hurt. Amusingly, the separate USB cable included has only one connector, so I wonder what people are supposed to do if they find they need the extra power on an "additional PC".

I tested on two PCs, one a Dell Mini 9 netbook running Windows 7 (not officially supported at this time, but it worked) and an older Pentium 4 desktop running Windows Vista. At the time, Seagate's documentation and web site did not claim support for 64-bit systems, but I tested on Vista x64 and it did work.

Hooking it Up

When you plug the Replica into your PC, Windows will discover it. Depending on which Windows version you have and how it is configured, it will either automatically run the setup routine or you'll have to manually start it by double-clicking on the device icon in My Computer (the instructions cover this.) The Replica has a blue LED which flashes while it is "doing something", which seemed to be all the time.

The first thing it does is check to see if there is an updated version of the software on Seagate's web site. In my case there was, so it downloaded it and then restarted the installation. I was delighted to find that it stored the new copy on the Replica so that it would not have to repeat this in the future. A registration screen is displayed which you can skip if you want, and then.. you're done - not even the appearance of a normal setup program. When it's finished, a screen comes up saying that you are now protected - this screen has a link to the manual (help), which I recommend you read as it provides lots of useful information.

Getting to Work

When the Replica is connected, there is a taskbar tray icon which shows the current status. If you hover your mouse over the icon, a small window pops up telling you what the Replica is doing now and the date of the last "restore point" if any. Right clicking on this icon provides additional options, such as setting a password, getting help, and "safely removing" the Replica.

A shortcut labeled "Seagate Replica" is installed onto your desktop. If you open this, the Replica "opens" and you see the names of the PC(s) you are protecting. Opening these will let you see the folders and files that are backed up. If you open one of the files, you will see one or more dates showing the version(s) backed up. This lets you easily retrieve a previous version of a file, even if you had deleted it.

On your PC, if you hover the mouse over a file, a box will appear showing the date of last backup and how many versions are saved. In my experience, this box took some time to appear after the individual file was backed up, so patience is a virtue. Assuming you leave the Replica connected all the time, it will be there when you need it.

Making Friends

If you then connect the Replica to another PC, you'll be given the option to either protect this PC too (installs the software) or to get access to the saved files on the Replica. This latter choice doesn't require any installation and is a great way of copying files to another PC.

Unlike many of the backup solutions I have seen (True Image excepted), the Replica intelligently manages its disk space so that it is "never full". As the disk fills up, it automatically drops the oldest saved versions of files so that you always have at least the current files protected. No configuration of this is needed.

By default, the Replica backs up all partitions and disks on your PC that have the NTFS file system. This point is NOT called out in the product description. Most users are unaware of what file system they are using. Older PCs that were upgraded to XP might have one or more FAT32 file system partitions, and Replica will not back these up. The manual says that it will back them up "during initialization", whatever that means, but my testing showed that not to be the case. If you want to know what file system your partition uses, open My Computer, right click on a partition name (say, C) and select Properties. On the General tab, look for "File System" and you want it to say NTFS. The Replica software will NOT warn you that a partition is unsuitable so make sure you check yourself. What you can do, after install, is right click on the Replica tray icon and choose the option to set which disks are protected. (Yes, you can do that!) If there is no checkmark by the disk name, then it is not protected.

Uh-Oh!

Ok, so now we're backing up the PC - what happens when disaster strikes? Remember that CD I told you about? Here's where you use it. You want to get your PC to boot from the CD. There is an instruction leaflet in with the CD with an overview - in some cases you may need to press a special key at the initial PC boot screen to get to a place where you can tell the PC to boot from the CD. Assuming you manage this, the CD boots into a Linux-based application which leads you through the process. After asking you to make sure this is what you want, it has you select the name of the PC you want restored (assuming there's more than one) and then which disk it should restore to. Here's where I ran into my first problem.

The PC I tested restore on had three hard disks, two of which were the same size and same brand and model of disk. The Replica shows you only the size, brand and model number - not other information that might be helpful such as the names of any partitions that may be on the disks. So if you have more than one hard drive, you may need to very carefully look at your PC's BIOS setup screens to see which one is first, second, etc. Most people won't have this problem, I'll admit. If you're really paranoid, you may want to disconnect disks you don't want restored, if any. The disk I had backed up had only one partition - I don't know what would happen if there were multiple partitions, especially if not all were backed up.

Oh, there was a second, minor issue. Before I shut down the PC to test the restore, I checked to make sure it had completed saving the "restore point" and it said it had that morning. But when I went to do the restore, it found only the restore point from the previous night. It seems that it takes a while for it to record what it did, so you might miss some recently created or changed files when restoring a backup. Again, this is only for the "disaster" scenario where your disk is damaged or corrupted, and you'd probably be happy to lose only a few hours of work in that case.

Once everything was selected, the restore was done. This took an hour or more, not unreasonable. When it was finished, you clicked an on-screen button and the system reboots. I found that it had done the restore perfectly (albeit, as I mentioned, missing some late changes.)

Summary

I highly recommend the Seagate Replica. It truly is simple to use and provides worthwhile and accessible protection for not only individual files, but the whole system image. I do strongly suggest that you read through the entire help document available after you install, as it provides tips and pointers and clues to features you might not have suspected.

Everything worked the way I expected and it's an ideal choice for Windows PC users who like simplicity. Experts, or those who like to be in control might feel better with a different solution, such as an external or Network Attached Storage drive and software such as Acronis True Image. There are also online backup solutions such as Carbonite (which I also use), Mozy and Norton Online Backup, though none of those will restore your entire system.

Everyone, though, should have at least some sort of backup solution, and the Seagate Replica is a near-flawless execution of it's intended goal. I am very impressed! Just hook it up and it will be there when you need it. My mom agrees!

Honestly, when I got this I was stumped for a few moments because I kept saying, "It can't be that easy. Is this for Windows?"

But yes. Just as advertised, you unpack the Replica, plug in the USB cable, and then just click a prompt on screen. Boom. You're backing up your hard drive; Your WHOLE hard drive.

Now, that's only one half of the equation, and I will have to plead the fifth on the other half-- Restoration. While I'd simply loooooove to give you a more complete review by crashing my system and restoring from the Seagate Replica, I just can't work it out. So I guess the second half of this review will have to come when disaster strikes and I need to restore from the Replica. At this point, what I *can* tell you is that it does seem to be doing its job, requires little to no input from the user, and just quietly goes about its business continually backing up your hard drive(s).

No active software installation is required on the user's part, although you do get a little system tray icon that lets you check the drive's status and progress, and assign which drives you want backed up.

The Multi-PC version has a nifty (and sturdy) dock that comes with a nice dual-USB cable for those of you who have weaker USB ports. The drive requires no AC adapter, getting all its power from your computer's USB port. That's very handy, indeed, as I was running out of outlets!

This is kind of a hard device to review because, really, it just quietly backs up your computer, and only becomes truly interactive when you need to restore... And I haven't needed to do that, yet.

(Be patient. It's Windows. It will happen!)

What I do find curious is that, while you don't need to install anything to start the backup process, you DO need a special disc (included) to actually restore the backup. Don't lose it! I put mine in my Windows Vista box, and should disaster strike, I'll have it at hand.

If you're looking for a simple, no-brain-required backup device, this is it. You really just plug it in the computer and leave it there. That's pretty much all there is to it, and that's all you can do with it. No drag-and-drop, no adding your own files. You can restore individual files, but you can't put individual files onto it; Only whole backups. In a way, this works a lot like Apple's TIME MACHINE application, constantly updating your backup, and serving as "just in case" device.

As a laptop user, I find this to be the best backup solution for me. When I get home, I connect to my USB hub, and the Replica gets back to work backup up my stuff. I continue working in the foreground, and notice nothing happening... Which is how it should be.

Do not get this thinking it's just an external hard drive; It's not designed that way. While it IS an external hard drive, it's the integrated software that makes it work well.

Just remember that when it comes to backups, this is an All or Nothing device. Everything on the hard drive(s) selected gets backed up. You can't omit files, you can't tell it to ignore any folders. It backs up everything or nothing at all.

Simple, in this case, is good.

UPDATE:
I still haven't needed to restore, but I did notice one peculiar thing about the Replica. It mounts and unmounts itself continually, rather quickly, causing your list of installed devices within Windows to "flash" or "blink" -- It's there, then it's not, then it's there again. It interferes sometimes, such as in Windows Vista network settings, where Windows is convinced you're inserting and removing a USB flash drive, and won't let you enter data until you disconnect the Replica.

I'm not sure this is normal behavior, but this issue can be a pain. I'll go to click my D: drive icon, and it will be moved by the Replica popping back into existence, only to disappear again a moment later, thus moving the icons around again. I have also noticed some performance hits from this behavior.

I'm hoping Seagate can address this and make the Replica work without this connect/disconnect behavior.

I still also wish the thing would give the option of turning off the blinking LED light... It's annoying at night.

UPDATE:
After attempting to uninstall and reinstall the Replica software, I ran into several errors. I therefore am not using the Replica software, as tech support and info for the Replica seems to be very limited. Instead, I'm using it as a standard 500GB backup drive until I switch to Windows 7. At that point, I'll try to use the Replica software and see if the "mount/unmout" problem, and the installation problems are settled.

So knock one and a half stars off the review, as "ease of use" should include uninstall/reinstall actions within Windows Vista, and instead, doing so leads to an inability to get the Replica software working again... But it's still a nice, stylish hard drive.

UPDATE 10/09:
Well, Windows 7 retail release came and went, and I tried using the Replica software with my PC again. I wish I could say it's working great, but unfortunately, there are still problems. This time, it backed up the main drive just fine, and then started on the nearly-empty secondary drive in my system only to halt and declare itself stopped because it was full. The problem with this is that it wasn't full, as Explorer showed about 60GB unused on the Replica. Checking the Replica "Remove a drive" menu showed me that-- for some reason-- It wanted 465GB of backup space dedicated to the secondary hard drive which only has 4GB of data on it. From the way it looks, it's not basing the backup space requirement on the actual data present on the drive, but on the size of the drive itself.

Worse, when I tried to remove the drive from the list of backup targets, it wouldn't let me. The option to remove any drive was greyed-out because, I presume, the Replica refused to work since it was "full". Nothing I tried would allow me to reclaim that space, and the Replica refused to do anything more.

Not wishing to leave myself at the mercy of such obviously buggy software, I'm discontinuing use of the Replica software and will return to simply using it as a plain external hard drive again. In that, at least, it's decent. I'm sorely disappointed by Seagate's Replica software, though. It does NOT work like the Apple Time Machine at all; It's finicky, stubborn, very limited in customization, and offers little in the way of fixes when something goes wrong. There's also no way to know if your backup is usable until you actually need to restore a whole hard drive, and I'm just not willing to risk my data on software like that. Windows Backup is more reliable.

There's a lot of wasted potential here, as evidenced by the reviews on Amazon and the Seagate forums. Great idea, but absolutely lousy application. I have therefore dropped my review from five stars to three stars, and those three are only granted because it IS a nice hard drive with a decent vertical mounting base. As a software backup solution, it fails every test I am willing to give it. I only hope Seagate pay more attention to user comments in their forums in the future, because the potential is still here.

UPDATE 03/10:
I've been using this as a 500GB portable hard drive, and haven't been disappointed by the performance in that regard. While the backup software failed me, the hard drive itself has been quite useful and reliable. If you can grab this at a discount, it's worth it for the nice form-factor, included dock, and decent hard drive.

This backup system is a good idea, but I question some of the execution.

First off, the drive itself looks sleek and professional. And if you plan on using the dock (which requires TWO USB connections for power requirements), it looks even cooler. One complaint I have is that if you opt not to use the dock as I have, the USB cable that connects directly to the drive itself is VERY short (only 12 inches). So if you are using this drive with a tower computer that is located on the floor as I am, there's a good chance the cable won't be long enough to allow you to put the drive on top of the computer case (or the desk). Your only option then is to either use the dock (which requires two USB ports and has a cable length of 43 inches) or to use a USB extension cable like I have opted to do.

The biggest problem with this drive is the software. While the "set it and forget it" style may be good for some, especially novice users, it's a bit too basic for my needs. I have six hard drives ranging from 125GB to 500GB, and I would *love* if the software allowed you to include/exclude certain folders. As the software is written now (version 3.0.768.5345), you can only select entire drives to backup.

Also, if you are backing up your system drive (the C:\ drive for most people), the software is constantly backing up changed files... even files you normally wouldn't need to back up like your web browser cache and temporary files as you're browsing the web. This causes a noticeable slowdown on my computer (Vista SP1 32-bit, Core 2 Duo 6600 @ 2.4Ghz x 2, 4GB RAM, SATA-II hard drives). This could easily be solved if the software allowed you to exclude certain folders.

In addition, the software integrates itself into Windows Explorer, so when you double-click on the backup drive it shows the files with a Replica watermark in the background and behaves slightly different than normal browsing of drives would. Since I've installed the software, I've experienced quite a number of crashes in explorer.exe, even when I'm viewing files in folders that are on my local drives OUTSIDE of the backup drive itself.

I hope that Seagate will address these issues, but since the software is mature at version 3.0.x, I have little hope of them being addressed anytime soon. I will probably be installing a third-party backup software package and use that instead of the Seagate software.

While this backup system is a good idea, the software will be seriously underpowered for many users. But if you only have one drive in your computer that you need to backup, and a slight slowdown of your machine doesn't bother you, and you are lucky enough not to experience crashes in Windows Explorer as I have, then this backup system would fit your needs. If they address the software issues I identified above, this backup system COULD be a 5-star product and highly recommended for everyone.

>>>>> IMPORTANT UPDATE: 10/28/09... After many more weeks of usage, I had to drop my rating from 3 stars to 1. First of all, the number of crashes and freeze ups I was experiencing in Explorer on Vista SP1 32-bit when the Replica software was installed was insane. Almost every time I opened an Explorer window it would either lock up completely or there would be a 30 second delay. And almost every time I closed an Explorer window, it crashed Explorer. Debug logs indicate the cause was some of the Replica DLLs. I finally gave up and uninstalled Replica and the crashes and lockups completely stopped. After I installed Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit recently, I figured I'd give the Replica software another try. I experienced the same things that I did under Vista: constant lockups and crashes. Again, after uninstalling Replica, no more problems. The Seagate HD forums are buzzing about problems with the software, and Seagate is pretty much mum on the issues. I also wrote to tech support, detailing the exact problem and providing debug information, and they didn't even bother to respond. So this product gets a 1 star (at best). Without software that runs correctly, you're simply overpaying for a regular external drive (external hard drives can be found much cheaper). That fact, coupled with Seagate's non-existent support, makes this product a complete failure. Please, don't take a chance and waste your money! (Side note: I am an IT professional.)

I have purchased two Seagate Replica drives to backup my Windows XP and Windows Vista computers.
The most immediate effect is that my computers were barely running. Continuous replication slows down the computers very significantly. It is unbearable especially if you are using programs that process a lot of files.

The final trouble before I was told to uninstall by Seagate technical support is the frequent crash of Windows Explorer. My Windows XP computer had to be restarted half a dozen times on a typical day. After I tracked the slowness and crashes to Seagate Replica, I contacted the technical support. They told me that there is no workaround and I should uninstall the software.

I removed the software from both of my computers. Crashes are gone and my computers are back to normal.

This is an excellent product but be sure to get the correct size. I have a laptop with a 320GB drive containing about 150GB of data, so I ordered the 250GB version. Upon installation it told me the Replica drive was too small. Reviewing various Seagate blogs I found that the Replica drive must be equal to, or bigger than the drive to be backed-up, or it will not function, regardless of the amount of data to be backed-up. I returned the 250GB and purchased the 500GB version. Everything is working perfectly...and effortlessly. Additionally, I have experienced no performance degradation others have referenced.

I am sad to report that this product has enough flaws that I will quit using it. They simply haven't gotten this product right. Here's my list of flaws:

1) Whenever it's connected, your PC will be S-L-O-W. The backup software seems to have a higher priority than anything else and even opening your C-drive will be incredibly slow.

2) It attempts to access the floppy drive continuously. This is a plain old bug. If you don't feed your PC a blank floppy to chew on, the drive will buzz loudly every few minutes.

3) It's very picky about what USB port it uses. I suppose it's due to the current requirements, but it only works on my powered hubs and only some of those. It can't seem to function from the PC's own motherboard USB ports.

4) Mine has now confused itself sufficiently that although it seems to be spinning, reading, and writing, any attempt to access it times out. It indicates that it's trying to create a Recovery point, but it's been saying that for days.

On the other hand, the basic idea is great. But any back-up scheme that is less reliable than the system it's backing up is ultimately a failure.

The Seagate FA Replica 500GB Multi-PC backup system is the perfect system for non-techie types, or for folks who like to "set it and forget it."

I've been using this Seagate Replica system for over a month now and I'm thoroughly pleased with it. That being said, the unit is not for everyone. The device itself is a hard drive encased in a small shell with one USB port on the side. You can plug the unit directly to your computer via a USB cable or with the included dock (multi-PC version only). Once you plug the Replica into your computer by either of those two methods the replica software install screen will pop up on your computer. There is a very simple, quick install with no reboot. Once installed, the Replica backup program resides in your lower right task bar and it will be begin to index the files on your computer. After indexing, the program begins to backup all your files. It will not create a perfect sector for sector mirror of your hard drive, but it will copy all of your files. There is nothing to do on your part other than let the Replica index and backup. The first time I plugged the Replica into my 2 Vista computers it took a good 6-8 hours each for the first backup to finish. Subsequent backup times were much shorter (less than an hour), and depended on how many new files I had created, modified, or moved around on my computer. The Replica will also only keep 1 version of a file if you have it present on multiple computers, which saves space. Many of my common program files were only copied once, but the indexing of the files allows the hard drive software to keep track of what goes where if you need to recover anything. As far as resource usage goes, the Replica didn't consume too much for me. I'm using relatively powerful Core 2 Duo processors with 2GB and 3GB of RAM and it's CPU consumption hovered around3- 5% of system resources, with occasional spikes to 30%. Still, I was able to do light web browsing while it was backing up without significant slow-down. But obviously this is going to depend on your machine and the intensity of the backup. If you have a single core CPU with 1GB or RAM or less, I would bet you would see significant slow down for most of your activities--mainly with the first backup. Regardless of your computer's speed, I seriously recommend that for the first backup that you just turn on your computer, get the Replica started and walk away for a couple hours. Subsequent backups seem less demanding on the system resources (less 30% spikes).

The Replica ships with a recovery disc. This disc isn't used for the initial Replica install; instead, you pop the disc into your CD drive if you ever need to recover from a hard drive crash. The Replica will put all of your files back onto your repaired hard drive. At least that's what the disc claims to do. I wasn't excited about force crashing my hard drive just for the sake testing everything out for of this review, so I'll take their word on it.

When I say the Replica is "set it and forget it," I mean it, literally. The software is so basic and simple, and in a nutshell, it just works. This is its greatest strength and biggest weakness. If you gave this thing to your grandmother and told her to backup your computer with it, she could absolutely do it. However, if you want to tinker with the backup, modify it any way, or dictate what CPU resources are being used to run it, forget about it. Those options don't exist. You plug it in and it backs up, end of story. Sure, you can still use it as a regular external hard drive by dragging your own files on there however you want (from say, an extra thumbdrive), but it's still going to backup your files automatically without your input or control. The thing has a mind of its own and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm a moderate to high-level techie/geeky guy and I like to customize the settings of my gadgets. Honestly, though, I found the simplicity of the Replica refreshing. I have a lot of data that needs to be backed up on my laptop for work-related stuff and at times I can be lazy about setting manual backup triggers with other external drives. I still have another networked hard drive that I house lots of files on and was previously backing up to, but I really like the Replica. I've gotten into the habit of every Friday just plugging in my Replica and walking away from my computer for 30 minutes while it does its thing and I feel securely backed up. If you want simplicity...whether it's for your parents' computer, or a non-techie friend's computer, a work computer that you don't want to hassle with, the Replica can't be beat and it's a 5-star product. The only case where it can be annoying is for the power techie guy who likes to control all of his computer resources, then you'll be utterly annoyed with it and should stay away. My 4-star rating is because while I think the thing is great, it's not for everyone, and they still could have buried a few control options within the software panel. But for affordable "set it and forget it" back ups, especially on multiple PCs, this thing works as advertised.

I was having an issue with my laptop that needed a return to the mfg repair facility for correction. I was told by their technician that there was a hardware problem and before returning the computer I should backup all important data. In my search for an external backup I came across the Seagate Replica 500GB. Upon receipt I attached the Replica to my computer and it started the backup. To backup 110 gigs took forever (days) but finally completed the project. When I received my computer back from the repair facility it had Windows XP already installed. They said the problem was with the HD. Now it is time to reinstall from the Replica. I inserted the reinstall disc as instructed and connected the Replica as instructed. Nothing. The disc said to read the little one page manual and the one page manual said follow the disc instructions. After much searching on the Seagate webiste I was able to talk to a real person who said I must change the bios setting to read the disc upon startup. No where did I read anything related to having to change the bios setting. Seagate could have added one more line to the little one page manual. Once I accomplished changing the bios setting everything went like clockwork. My HD was completely restored in less than an hour. Had I known that my original problem was software related rather than hardware related I would not have reinstalled XP from the Replica only the files. This was my error and not the fault of the Replica. Overall I am very pleased with this product. It does exactly what it was supposed to do and could only be improved by better instructions. Also I like the way that if it remains connected it will automatically backup new files as I use the computer. I am planning on purchasing another unit to backup my computer at work. I am self-employed so no problem there.

I like the Seagate Replica primarily for it's simplicity and ease of use. I'm currently using it to back up two computers- one laptop and one desktop. The Replica initially takes a long time, twelve hours or so to completely back up the contents of your hard drive, but once that is done, it runs discreetly in the background not disrupting current applications.

For the initial back up, I turned off the Internet connection on my computer, and then turned off the anti-virus software and let it work overnight. They suggest that users turn off anti-virus software to speed up the back up process so that each and every file being backed up does not have to be run through the virus checker.

After backing up both computers, I left it disconnected for a week and then reconnected it to update the back up. I found none of my applications ran slower while the replica was working. I was running an ftp connection with updates to godaddy, microsoft expression web 2 and design 2, 2 open browsers, and anti-virus software the entire time. I do not in the least find the Replica or it's software to be resource hogs and honestly couldn't tell the difference whether or not it was connected.

While it was connected to my laptop I was able to use it to browse the desktop computer backup and put a copy of some files onto my laptop with ease.

I also LOVE the fact that this can back up multiple computers, provided the entire back up is under 500 GB. I did find myself wondering though if 500 GB would be enough if I had to back up three computers. It worked fine for the two I have though.

My desktop computer is running XP with 3 GB of RAM. The laptop is running Vista 32 bit, with 2 GB of RAM. Neither of them have dual core processors. If your computer doesn't have at least XP with 2 GB of RAM, I suspect you will probably see some performance issues.

Final thoughts: This back up system is about as plug and play as it gets. It's worked perfectly for me and doesn't require much skill to use. The small footprint, when placed upright in it's docking station doesn't take up much space at all, and the blinking light on the top of it let's me know it's working. I recommend this for an easy to use way of backing up multiple computers.