I use two Lacie 250GB USB drives for "double-safe" backup purposes. On
my XP machine, a 2004 Dell desktop, I use XP's own NTBackup to create
weekly full backups to Lacie 1, usually turned off but still connected
to the machine. Once a month or so I copy the most recent XP backup from
Lacie 1 to Lacie 2 and store that drive in a basement firebox -- as far
"off site" as I can reasonably get. XP will happily restore from either
drive.

I had hoped to follow the same routine with my wife's new HP laptop
using Vista's Backup/Restore, set to "Automatic" (same as
"incremental"?). But, during a restore attempt, Vista Backup/Restore
refused to see the Lacie 2 disk or its copy of the backup. No "find
file" or "Browse" is offered. The drive and the files are visible to
Explorer with the same floating drive letter assignment, "F:" -- I have
not "hard labled" a drive letter to either Lacie -- BUT they are -named-
"Lacie 1" and "Lacie 2." If -that- is the problem, I could always
temporarily rename the drive during a restore, or is Vista looking at
deeper drive identification?

In other words, is my monthly safety copy to Lacie 2 useless with
Vista's Backup/Restore utility? It seems utterly married to Lacie 1.

Thanks very much for any help.

Travis (for Janene)

Basic specs:
HP Pavilion dv9910us Entertainment Notebook PC
(HP's nomenclature "dv9700 Notebook Computer")
AMD Turion™ X2 TL-60 Dual-Core Mobile (2.00GHz)
3GB installed memory
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M (UMA) with up to 1071MB
Microsoft Windows Vista® Home Premium with Service Pack 1
acquired: 7-9-08


--
Janene Charb