I bought a Maxtor external hard drive for backup purposes. The software pre-installed on this drive, Maxtor Manager, is fine as far as it goes but will only back up data files. It does not make disc images.

However, by virtue of owning a Seagate or Maxtor device, I was able to install and use another piece of Seagate software, DiscWizard which does, among other things, make and restore disc images. Interestingly, this software is ‘powered’ by Acronis True Image so perhaps can be thought of as ‘ATI lite’.

There does not seem to be any limit to the number of machines Disc Wizard can be used on, as long as your Seagate/Maxtor device is connected to the PC at the time of use.

I made bootable CDs and disc images for 2 of my PCs. I know that standard advice is to test such backups, but I ain’t that brave (or crazy, depending on which way you look at it).

For PC users seeking to pursue a backup strategy, there may be something to be said for buying even a modest spec Seagate/Maxtor drive in order to benefit from Disc Wizard. Bear in mind that the fully featured version of ATI currently sells for 50 US dollars and, if I am not mistaken, can only be used on a single machine.

Hoping that this post will have saved the PGMusic community many hundreds of dollars….

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