external hard drive question

I purchased an external hard drive.. is it possible to connect it to 2 different desktops and a laptop to be able to back up all three to the external? and if it is possible is it just a matter of unplugging a cable and plugging that cable into the next computer or is there more to it than that?

Also, I want the ablititiy to backup my computers to this external drive so that if something happens.. it is just a matter of using the external to get me right back to the point I was at with no loss of stuff and no bunches of reinstallations.. from what I can tell from my research .. Acronis True Image seems to be the way to go for that.. is this correct? If so, does that need to be installed on all 3 computers?

yeah I admit I dont know that much about this kinda stuff..so any and all help is appreciated.

 

Yup. That's it! You can only plug the external into one PC at a time. You should probably create a partition for each PC to avoid conflicts and overwriting files of the same name. You could just create a folder for each PC on a single partition, but if you plan on doing image backups (see below) then individual partitions is the way to go.

Yup. If you're using Acronis and you use it to create images to back up, you can simply restore from one of the images. And yes, Acronis must be installed on all PC's (I think so anyway- I haven't used Acronis in ages and my memory isn't all that great). I know from using other drive imaging software, that you pretty much have to use a partition to back up an entire drive "as-is". You cannot put a drives image in a folder unless the app you're using can compress the image into a file. In that case, you could create 3 folders on one partition; a folder for each PC. You could name the folders something like "LivingRoom HP" or maybe "MyDellLaptop" or whatever....

 

"create a partition for each PC "

so any help in how to do this? when i plug in the external drive and turn it on will it ask me to create partitions.. I don't have to do any kind of formatting or anything do I? I have purchased Acronis.. does it need to be installed Before I hook up the external drive?

Thanks dlb!