Yes, I’m two days late with this. Friday morning we were in Dunsmuir. It was raining so hard you couldn’t even see Mount Shasta, the Ur-Guru was in an evil mood because of the weather, and we were facing a long drive across the mountains to Eureka to meet my long-lost cousin and his family. So I had just about time to back up the computer to my new Maxtor OneTouch Mini drive, and no time to write about it.

Enough with the excuses, already. I’m home, the sun is shining, and I’m in no hurry to see the inside of my car again for a while.

This was actually the second trip with the Mini drive rather than the Seagate FreeAgent Go drive I bought a few months ago, since I wanted to be able to test it a bit more and contrast the two. Though about the same physical size, and with the same capacity, they look nothing alike. The Mini has a brushed-metal top with a rectangular depression above the Maxtor name, nested in slightly rubberized black plastic with rounded edges and a small but bright white LED which changes in brightness and pattern depending on whether the drive is sleeping, working, or powered down.

Overall, I think the design of the FreeAgent Go drive is more attractive (in spite of that huge yellow light). The OneTouch series, large and small, are supposed to look solid and vault-like, conveying security, whereas the emphasis with the FreeAgent drives is portability. (I’m paraphrasing Jay Pecheck’s answer to my question about whether there were any plans to converge the two series of drives.) The hefty OneTouch 4 Plus with its odd trapezoidal profile succeeds at that; trying to make anything as small as the Mini look vault-like risks an excess of cute. But it does make for a matched set when one has both models.

Like the FreeAgent Go, the OneTouch Mini requires two USB ports, one for power and one for data. This is probably the thing I like least about the drives, because if I have both of them connected, it means that my USB hub and the four ports on my laptop are all filled. (If you’re curious, the other ports are taken up by the tablet and the scanner, now that the printer is connected to the Shared Storage II.) One thing I can say in favor of those shiny, fingerprint-attracting Western Digital drives the Ur-Guru has is that they only need one USB port apiece. So, since I know it’s technically possible to run power and data through the same USB cable, I’m not sure why the Seagate/Maxtor drives don’t do that.

The cables are a minor quibble, though. I’ve had no complaints with the FreeAgent drive since I got it, and the Mini is shaping up nicely. Jay isn’t kidding about wanting to associate the Maxtor name with data protection, since the Mini comes with three different options for backup.

Two of the backup options included with the OneTouch Mini (and the OneTouch Plus) are familiar, at least to someone who has used other Seagate/Maxtor products. There’s a basic backup program like the one on the Shared Storage II, where you choose the folders to back up and the days you want the backup job to run.

I ran into a small problem when choosing folders: many of the folders on my C drive didn’t appear in the list, presumably because Maxtor Manager identified them as hidden or system files, which it doesn’t support. In three cases, at least, those identifications are wrong, since I have three folders under C which hold my business documents: ! Author-izer, ! FileSlinger, and ! Podcast Asylum. The exclamation points (which are there to ensure the folders appear at the top of the list in an alphabetical sorting) seem to confuse Maxtor Manager.

I got around this problem by selecting the same folders on my D drive, which contain almost-as-recent information as those on my C drive, thanks to SyncBack—as well as many older files which are no longer active but which I might need if a former client calls. (Apparently Maxtor Manager only worries about exclamation points on your C drive.)

Unlike many software programs, Maxtor Manager’s backup doesn’t offer you the option of backing up your e-mail or your bookmarks. Since I use Outlook and my .pst file (with all my mail and contact information) is kept in a “hidden” folder (I long since un-hid it), I can’t even manually choose to back that data up, but I had no trouble with backing up the archive .pst files on the D drive. Because Outlook locks those files when it’s running, though, running the Maxtor Backup program with Outlook open results in a “backup failed” message and a little red icon in the system tray. (The same is true for Quicken data, but the program doesn’t appear to have any problems with open Microsoft Office documents.)

The Mini’s second backup option, Sync, suffers from the same “blindness” as the backup program, and works much the same way. You get a choice of “Simple Sync,” which synchronizes the My Documents folder and “Custom Sync,” where you choose your own folders; in my case the choices are “My Documents,” “Desktop,” “C,” and “D.” (Some people tend to store a lot of stuff on their desktops, something I never understood but see often enough to understand why Seagate chose to provide that option.)

The difference between “Sync” and “Backup” is that Sync copies—and deletes—files in both directions. The idea is to be able to update your files on one computer, sync with the Mini drive, connect the drive to another computer, and sync again to ensure all the newest files get transferred onto that machine, updating any previous versions. You can choose to sync automatically or manually, and to have the program ask whether you want to replace files or always overwrite. Except for the restriction on the folders you can choose to synchronize, Maxtor Sync appears identical to Seagate’s Folder Sync, though I think the Seagate interface is a bit slicker (unfortunate color scheme notwithstanding).

These tools, while useful enough, are nothing really new. The most interesting backup option on the OneTouch drives is SafetyDrill, Maxtor’s new drive imaging software. The Ur-Guru and I tested it on a system we’d just reinstalled, and it worked perfectly. To make the image, you go to the “Safety” tab in Maxtor Manager (denoted by a life ring) and choose “Create SafetyDrill(TM) Copy Now.” You can ask for reminders to create copies every X days, and you can limit the space your OneTouch drive lets you use for those copies. You can also decide how many of those copies you want to keep (just the most recent, the last two, the latest five, etc).

To restore from your image, you need to boot your machine from the SafetyDrill™ CD which ships with the drive. Once you do that, you find yourself in a Linux environment. Don’t mind the X-shaped pointer; everything in SafetyDrill works pretty much the same as in Windows, and there’s not much room for confusion, since the only choice you have to make is which image to restore. The idea is to keep you from making mistakes during such a critical operation.

Backup and restore times were comparable to Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate (which we’d just used to make an image before testing SafetyDrill). SafetyDrill is easier to use, at least for those who aren’t familiar with DOS and the rather odd way Ghost rearranges your drive letters. I’m thinking of using the Mini to store drive images and keeping the space on the FreeAgent available for straight file copies. It’s small enough that it’s easy to take out of my office and store in a safe-deposit box (should I ever get one), and the drive has encryption options built in, both password-protection for the entire drive and Maxtor Encryption, which automatically encrypts and decrypts files when you put them in the password-protected folder it creates.

It’s always good to put a password on anything it’s easy to lose, like small hard drives, USB sticks, PDAs—and laptops, which may not be all that easy to lose, but remain easy to steal. Just back up the password somewhere other than the Mini drive.

I’d give the Mini four stars out of five. I think it needs an e-mail backup option if it’s really going to protect people’s most critical data without resorting to a complete drive image. And since many laptops are short on USB ports, combining the data and power cables into one would enhance usability and portability. Nevertheless, I think the software bundled with the Mini, in particular SafetyDrill, is a big improvement on the “lite” version of Retrospect that shipped with earlier OneTouch drives.

Finally, I have to wonder why Maxtor is sticking with the OneTouch name, because neither the Mini nor the Plus has a button on it that you can press to run your backups. Admittedly you can back up or sync by right-clicking on the Maxtor icon, but that’s actually two touches. Given that the backups run automatically once you set them up, perhaps “Touch Free” would be more accurate.

Read IntroAnalytic’s press release at http://www.introanalytic.com/BackupResearchMediaRelease.pdf

The DM Review editorial staff reprises the press release: http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1049420

Comments on the study from Chris Mellor at TechWorld: http://www.techworld.com/storage/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=3&entryID=152

The Ur-Guru suggested I take a look into the BIOS (that stands for Basic Input/Output System) to see whether there was something in those settings. So I restarted the computer and made a quick stab for the F2 key, which happens to be the key that enables me to enter Setup on Astarte. (I think it was the DEL key on Keramat; each manufacturer seems to choose its own, though F1 is almost always reserved for Help.) In wandering through the several pages of Setup functions, I was able to switch the infrared port on, but I didn’t find anything that affected USB.

So the Ur-Guru came to my rescue and provided me with a special CD from which I could boot into a “preinstalled environment” (that is to say, a sort of scaled-down operating system) and run Ghost 8. This CD is not produced by Symantec, but was created by a Dutch systems administrator named Bart Lagerweij to make his own life easier. His Bart-PE (there’s that Preinstalled Environment again) is distributed free of charge from http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/. (It’s 2 MB download.) Bart is really providing a tremendous service, as the CD is useful for a whole lot of diagnostic and repair functions; Ghost 8 is almost an afterthought from Bart’s perspective.

Before you can create the CD itself and use it, you need to have your Windows XP CD on hand (preferably with Service Packs 1 and 2 integrated, unless you want to engage in a tricky process called slipstreaming, which I personally would rather not get into). If your storage device (CD-ROM, external hard drive, removable drive, or whatever) came with special drivers, you have to put those into the “drivers” subfolder in the directory where you installed the PE-builder. And in order to use the additional software (Symantec Ghost Corporate 8, Nero Burning ROM, Disk Commander and ERD Commander 2002 by Winternals) legally, you also have to buy that software if you don’t own it already.

Then you can start PE-Builder, insert your Windows XP CD, create your .iso file (that’s the extension used by the “image” used to make a CD, particularly a bootable CD), and burn it to a CD. And then you can insert the CD in your CD drive, restart, and see whether it works.

If your eyes are glazing, you’re not alone. Bart-PE was created as a way to make life easier for Bart’s fellow geeks, and while he has made the overall process fairly straightforward (despite the pages of descriptive details, legal disclaimers, and other technical information on the website), this may well not be something you want to do yourself. As I said before, the Ur-Guru created the one I used last week.

However, while I’ve been typing this, I downloaded PE-Builder, installed it, grabbed my XP CD, and created my own CD—admittedly without adding any extra drivers to it. Neither my CD/DVD-writer nor my external hard drive actually came with any additional drivers for Windows XP. (I suppose if I felt really adventurous I could try adding the Windows 98 drivers.) Unfortunately, I also forgot to add the “plugins” folder, so while I got a perfectly good bootable disk, it didn’t have Ghost 8 on it. I’m now trying it again, and the CD (now with rather more data on it) is burning merrily away. Testing this one will require another restart.

So, as you can see, this is a slow process, and for many people it’s not going to be worth it either to do it themselves or to have someone else do it. For those of us who think Ghost 8 is miles better than Ghost 9, it’s definitely worth it.

For the rest of the world, I’m going to report on my cross-comparison between Dantz Retrospect and Acronis TrueImage next week.

After three attempts to repair the power-connector problem with my laptop (and then-only computer), I realized that I would need not one but two computers to replace her. New computers come with warranties, which is good—but to have repairs done under warranty usually means sending the computer back to the manufacturer, which takes a week to ten days, and is NOT good. So I needed not just to back up the data on my machine, but to get a backup machine to use in case something went wrong with the first one.

With a little research and the help of Craigslist and eBay, I was able to purchase two computers with my new-computer budget: a brand-new 15.4″ widescreen Gateway, and a used Dell Latitude PIII with a year still remaining on the on-site service contract. The Gateway is still being assembled and shipped, but I picked up the Dell last week and have been busily installing and configuring it.

One thing about new laptops which I don’t much like is that they don’t have floppy disk drives. True, almost no one uses floppies these days, but a floppy drive is a requirement for using Symantec Ghost 8 Corporate, my preferred drive-mirroring program. You create the floppies from within Windows using Ghost Boot Disk and then use them when making or restoring from backups. They run an operating system called PC-DOS and can thus create an image of your drive when Windows is at rest. When Windows is running, something is always changing, so the chance of an error when creating an image is much too high for my comfort. I’d used Ghost 8 with great success on Keramat (the dying computer) and would prefer to go on using it.

Last year, however, Symantec bought PowerQuest, the makers of DriveImage. The good news is that Ghost 9 does not require a floppy drive. The bad news is that it makes its backups from within Windows. This made me nervous. And while PC Magazine and other reviewers gave Ghost 9 good marks, the Ur-Guru panned it—primarily because it couldn’t recognize his RAID controllers and was therefore totally useless to him.

So I was happy to discover that Astarte came with a floppy drive, the kind you swap with the CD drive. I figured I was all set to go on making backups with Ghost 8, at least on my backup machine.

But for some reason Ghost 8 can’t see my external hard drive when I connect it to Astarte’s USB port. (Astarte doesn’t have a FireWire port, one of her few drawbacks.) It can’t see my CD/DVD-writer, either. It seems to be blind to USB, despite the fact that I had it install USB drivers when I made the floppies, and despite the fact that Astarte can see and use both external drives just fine from within Windows.

This meant I had to use Ghost 9. Since I didn’t want to put a full installation, much less my own data, at risk, I decided to test it on the bare system as I’d bought it. (And I was annoyed to discover that while you can restore from the Ghost 9 CD without starting Windows, you can’t back up directly from the CD. What were they thinking?)

To my relief, it worked just fine, but I still don’t feel entirely satisfied, and I’m going to want to test out some alternatives once the Gateway (whose name, incidentally, is Enheduanna) arrives. It may be that I’ll prefer Retrospect, TrueImage, or another program to Ghost now that I’m entering the floppy-free zone.

Since it’s gotten cold out, the cat has developed a lamentable tendency to take up residence smack in the middle of my laptop. In doing so, she manages to hit some interesting key combinations. (Indeed, she once caused the computer to shut down, though more often she just sets the NumLock key on and has me typing numbers instead of letters, which is not beneficial to my spelling.) I try to shut down—or at least shut—the computer when I leave the room, but this isn’t always possible.

Last week I left the house while my Ghost backup was still running. I came back to find the cat on the keyboard (the machine always gets very warm while copying the drive image) and the message ‘proceed with image file creation?’ on the screen. I have no way of knowing at what point the furry fiendette started walking across the keys, either.

As far as I can tell from Ghost Explorer, the image is complete, even though the final span is a much smaller file than the others. I should probably make a new one to be sure of it—and lock the cat out of the room while I’m doing so.