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I have a Seagate GoFlex PC/Mac USB external HDD, 1 TB which I used the other day to back up critical files on my Acer Win 7 laptop's 500 GB HDD, first thing I did before starting the backup was look in the drive's box for the user docs, there was in fact, hardy any "how to set it up" for a file system back up, only a small 2 - 3 page leaflet with very little instructions on it, so I connected the drive via USB, started the backup and it took all night in which it backed up the entire C:\ drive of the laptop. The backup interface has a "restore" and a "backup" plus an "advanced" clickable button on it, so far I've only used the "backup" button once, havn't yet used the "restore" nor the "advance" buttons yet, and I sort of hesitate how to use them, since the drive has already back up about 230 GB's worth of stuff that is still on the C: drive.

I'm thinking of wiping (the next morning following the all-night backing up, the backup indicator said it was 99 % complete) & reformatting the Acer's C:\ drive and reinstalling the OS and replacing not everything that was backed up, but only a few items, but I'm not exactly sure how to do this in case I make a mistake/have to back up all over again/mess something up, etc, etc, etc?


Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't recommend it without knowing exactly what the drive is backing up. If it's designed to restore your whole hard drive, you may not be able to pick and choose what you want.

Did you make restore discs when you first got the PC?

My question would be why you want to wipe the Acer's C drive and what you hope to accomplish. How would you reinstall the OS? Is this a backup or an image?

I ask because I also have a Seagate EHD and the included software is very similar. Jenny is correct in that this software does not allow you to pick and choose what you restore - if you click on restore, it simply restores the backup "as-is." So, I'm not sure what you would accomplish here.

Yes, Jenny, I made backup discs of the OS right after I got the Acer. Not an image. On DVD.

What I'm trying to do, is back stuff up, wipe C:\, reinstall OS, and certain other things but not as much things as I had on the Acer before backing up on this Seagate EHD, so as not to overload drive C:\, so that there'd be more virtual RAM on drive C:\'s free space for the paging files (learned this in school last semester) so that my applications would run faster (like they did when I first started using the Acer after installing some stuff on it, since these days, the Acer executes any programs that I start up kind of slowly.

The Acer has about ~200 or so of its 500 GB HDD free space, 4 GB of RAM, so I'm wondering if a RAM (to 8 GB) upgrade would be advisable (I really want to upgrade RAM to 8 gig so I can allocate more RAM to the XP VM for my VMWare Player so that any applications on this VM would run better)?

Of course, it might have a few MB's/gig's of malware on it, but the only sites that I've went to while online on the Acer were my gaming message boards, PC Guide, Amazon/ebay/half.com, Microsoft, and other trusted sites and my gmail account inbox. So how could I have picked up some malware if I haven't been downloading images from Google's images on this computer, which used to take me to all kinds of sites that may or may not have malware on them before I got my MacBook Pro?

Did I buy the wrong kind of EHD?

Do you have a Windows 7 disc and all the drivers that the computer needs? Or are you going to use the restore DVD's you made?


You can set the size of your paging file manually, you know. But increasing the size of your paging file won't necessarily make your computer run faster. With 200GB of free space, it's doubtful that the paging file is to blame for your computer's slowness.


Have you checked whether your Acer's motherboard can use 8GB of RAM? Also, how many Virtual Machines are you running at the same time? Even an XP Virtual Machine shouldn't need more than 1GB and actually runs just fine with 512MB. Windows 98 would need even less.


If you want to use the drive simply to store files, don't use the software that came with it. Format it in NTFS the way you would a USB drive, and then copy the files you want to save over to it manually.

I have no idea whether you picked up a virus. Hopefully you're using an antivirus. But there are plenty of reasons a computer might be running slow other than a virus.

Yes, I just want to use this EHD to store files/folders.

Ok, I'll do this. But the problem is, I already deleted the folders containing these files from both the Acer's C:\ drive and its recycle bin, now, suppose I hook up the EHD, and use its software to restore the files, but will I run into even bigger problems b/c the EHD backed up all of 500 GB of the Acer's drive C:\ and I still have only ~200 GB free space on the Acer's drive C:\, or is there a way around this problem?

When I first used this EHD on the Acer, yes, I did use its software for this backup (which prompted this thread in the first place).

Obviously that is a problem . You can't fit 500GB into 200GB.


Buy another hard drive and extract to that.
You should back up important stuff in more than one place anyway.

Cruise, didn't you try to partition that drive and put XP on it?

She did more than try. She succeeded. But I think she deleted the XP partition and re-expanded the Windows 7 partition after finding there were no XP drivers for Optimus graphics. That alone wouldn't slow down Windows 7 enough to notice, but she's experimented with virtual machines and other software and it all adds up. Going back to factory defaults may not be a bad idea at this point, once she gets her backups worked out.

I did find this page about extracting files from a Seagate GoFlex backup.
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/214099en
So if her software has that "Specific Files" option she may not have to do the entire backup after all.

Oh, that's right... I remember now. No wonder it's running slow!

The GoFlex software is slightly different from my Seagate Go software, but still very similar. I'm not all that fond of it, but it's useable. I much prefer a 3rd party solution or just using the Windows 7 backup options. Another pretty decent option is to just use the Windows Easy Transfer in Windows 7. You can customize it any way you want in the advanced options. You would just treat it as "your old computer" to create the file and then if you had to reinstall your OS, just treat that as the "new computer" and use Windows Easy Transfer to move all your files and user settings back. I've done it a couple of times.

I used the Menmo software to restore the backup back into a folder onto the Acer's desktop. The backup was ~220 GB, but the restored backup was only 196 GB, owing to a bunch of files that couldn't be restored b/c of "too long of a file name". But anyway, right after checking to see if some of the folders/files were in the restored backup (they were), so I I reformatted (a quick format) the Seagate EHD as NTFS, and tested it by cut/paste a folder onto it (transfer successful, then tested again to see if folders transfered over to the now-NTFS formatted EHD would be transfered back, so tryed copy/pasting that transferred folder back to Acer's desktop (successful). Now to start transferring folders.

Also found a piece of free software from cnet which I d/l and used to scan the Acer's HW, found my mobo is an Acer 2R7, IntelHM55 chipset, takes DDR3 SDRAM RAM, checked total RAM capacity on net for Acer Aspire 5745G laptop, found (just as I suspected) that it'll go up to 8 GB max RAM, currently it has 4 GB RAM, the kind of RAM it uses is DDR3 PC3 10600, or DDR3 PC3 8500, non-ECC RAM sticks, and that the mobo takes 2 sticks of RAM - either 2 X 2 GB = 4 GB (as of currently) or 2 x 4 GB = 8 GB, and only in matched pairs.

Also I found the service manual for the laptop that I'm getrting from my Penna nephew, and it includes complete disassembly instructions (along with numbered diagrams) online about a week ago.

EDIT - I don't like the Nenmo software that came with this EHD, and I didn't know that the EHD had to be formatted (by me, etc), but 6 years ago when I got an Iomega 500 GB EHD, I didn't know as much about computer tech stuff as I do today (thanks, Jenny, Drac, Inland, et al) so back then my Penna nephew had to reformat it to NTFS and he never told me how he set it up, he only told me "you can use it now" sort of thing, so when I got this EHD, I never thought it had to be formatted, I thought I could just transfer folders onto it same as a NTSF formatted EHD. Why isn't this the case, I mean, why does the EHD have to be reformatted to choose and pick what to transfer as opposed to the preconfigured EHD Nenmo backup software?

It doesn't HAVE to be - it's just that many people don't like the backup software that comes with it. I've left my Seagate Go backup software on my EHD. I just don't use it - I pick and choose what to put on the EHD.

As Draclvr said, you don't HAVE to format it. I just usually do in order to get rid of the unwanted software they install by default. If you format your drive yourself, you'll know exactly what's on it. No "mystery files."

Yup, you know you have a "pristine" drive.

I take it this means if I format it myself, then I know I have a pristine drive, this is what you're saying?

Besides, formatting it myself makes the drive easier to back up on, software makes it harder.

That's correct - assuming it's been formatted properly, you know it has nothing on it at all.

Ok, guys, I spent all day backing stuff from the Acer's HDD onto this EHD, and used the recovery discs that I made (right after I got the Acer) to recover the system back to factory defaults and in the process, wiping drive C:\ so that now I have only 25.3 GB used space on the Acer's 500 GB HDD (this 25 GB is software installed at the factory - default software, I did not start installing stuff back onto the Acer yet, but closed it down for the night).

Now, hopefully during the month of June maybe I'd like to concentrate on getting the 8 GB of RAM sticks to upgrade the Acer (I checked into how much my mobo can take by using PC Wizard to scan its mobo) so I can allocate 4 GB of RAM to an XP VM in VMWare Player that I'd like to run some Adobe software (like Premiere and Photoshop) on for creating DVD videos for burning onto DVD for my local friends so I can start sharing my testimonies of my successes so they can pass these DVD's onto others that they know.

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May 15, 2012 07:29 AM

So, Inland, Jenny, what RAM (and price) would you recommend for my Acer?

I don't remember what the model numbers are for every computer that every GB member owns. Why don't you go to crucial.com and use their RAM calculator? Or there are any number of other RAM calculator's that go by model number that you could find with a Google search.

If you have questions after using RAM calculators to find the type of RAM that's the best for your computer, then at least provide us with the model number. But don't expect us to memorize what model your computer is, or to go back and search all your posts to try and figure that out.