For quite a while now, I've had a Seagate FreeAgent Desk external hard-drive for back-ups, and it works OK. I haven't been using it much, because if I'm changing programs or operating systems, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to be constantly creating new back-ups of such things. But I'm open to change, so today I gave it another go.
Here's what I learned: It has a management program called Seagate Manager, and that told me it has its latest update. So I said, "Fine - show me your back-up drive, and let's get started here." It looked at my system for a while, and then told me "There is no external drive connected to this system." Liar! The damned thing is sitting right here on top of the tower of the PC, all lit up like Christmas, and hot and running - or capable of it.
So much for Seagate's Manager program for its otherwise nice little back-up drive. I deleted that in Programs and Features, or so I thought until I looked in the Programs folder to see it was still there and very much alive and well, or appeared to be. So again, I deleted it from there, and this time it actually went. Persistent little bastard, I must say. Too bad it didn't work that well.
Then, having got rid of that useless Manager program, I went into Windows where I should have started in the first place, and used the Windows Back-up to make an image of this complete drive. The Score: Windows - 1, Seagate - 0.
If you want to format that external drive before starting this system image back-up, you can go to Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Management, and in the main window, right-click on the rectangle for that external drive, and then choose 'Format', and it will wipe that drive and format it for a fresh install. It does that quite quickly too. Then, when you put the fresh image on there, you don't need to worry about other stuff contaminating it.
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