Help with my new external hard drive

My computer guy built me a new external hard drive. It is a Seagate, 200GB with USB hook-up. I have a hard time sifting through the enormous amount of material about backing up. I would like to know if I should try some software application to help me or if I should just use the back-up utility included in the OS (Windows XP Pro). I also need to know about formatting and partioning also. Any help will be appreciated!

 

Personally, I've never found anything wrong with Window's backup suite, however, some people are simply against MS products, or have experienced their own problems with it. To them and yourself, I would recommend a look about in the Backup section of Majorgeeks' download pages. I'm confident you'll find an excellent app there, quite possibly for free.

And as for formatting and partitioning, what would you like to know? Its a fairly simple process. A partition is a logical divider of a disk. Ie, you could partition a 100GB hard drive into a 20GB section and 80GB section. This would appear in windows as two separate hard drives. Formatting simply erases a partition/disk so that you have a clean slate to install software upon.

I love installing windows on a small partition, and saving the larger part for my personal files. That way, I can virus scan, defragment, or even format windows on the small partition quickly, all without ever touching my personal data.