Maxtor One Touch Mini "Safety Drill" Backup

One of my clients recently had his laptop hard drive die. It took considerable time (and expense) to reload all his programs, settings, and get everything the way it used to be.  He did of course have a network backup, but that did not do a lot for his laptop.

So I started more actively investigating solutions that would give him a drive image of his PCs.  You can get a module for Backup Exec that will automatically image the local PCs, but he thought that was a bit pricy.

If you are willing to do it manually, there are a couple of solutions. Norton Ghost will create an “image” of the PC, but then in order to restore it you still have to do a minimal Windows install.

After some research, the Seagate Maxtor OneTouch Mini 4 seemed to be the ideal solution. A 160GB drive can be had for under $100.This lets you back up specific files (although with major limitations – it will not back up hidden or system files, nor can you configure file types (extensions) to be backed up that are not already on the list of file types). It is clearly intended just for documents, photos, music, etc. That is, intended for home users.  But it will do the backup job.

But that is not the main feature. The main feature is what Seagate calls “Safety Drill.”  This creates an image of your hard drive, much like Ghost or similar programs. What sets it off is that it comes with a bootable Linux CD that lets you restore the entire hard drive without having to reload Windows first.  Assuming it works as advertised (I have not put a new blank hard drive into my laptop to test it), this is a major advantage over similar programs I am familiar with.

Comments

[ZM]

Safty drill has issue. It doesn't start when you need to restore. Not much support available for this issue on the Maxtor's/seagate website.

[Lyall Kingman]

Saftey Drill will not run in 64 bit Vista. Seagate has no immediate plans to solvt the problem.

[Plusque Parfet]

Safety Drill worked for the first couple of backups. Now, although nothing about my system has changed, it fails to completely copy the drive.

[HAL9000]

Thanks God I did not buy it myself (my Company paid for it)

"SafetyGrill" fails to create an image - and as far as I could find out, this behaviour seems to be absolutely normal...

Even if I could get that piece of crap working, how can I trust to it if I am in the need of restoring my system (A short research reveals that this function is as "reliable" as creating an image...).

If you just want to drag+drop your mp3's or whatever to an external hdd it may be ok - but if you consider buying a "Waxtor wrong touch" because of it's promised system-backup-function, you should better look for something that really works without wasting your time and mental health.

Hands off!