Hi Stephen,
It does seem simple enough, is that really all there is to it? What about partitions in the hard drive and formatting the hard drive-not that I know what either of these things are or do, I have heard them mentioned in the past with hard drives on computers. It might be more than I want to get involved with if starts to deal with issues like that. Although I would like to learn about this stuff.
Here's what will/should happen: you install the hard drive in the external enclosure, plug it into a USB/Firewire/eSATA port on the computer, turn the new drive on, Windows/OSX "sees" the new device and installs the drivers it needs -- and then asks you if you want to format/partition the drive. If the drive is really huge (like 1-2TB) then you might decide to partition it. (In my case I have a 2TB drive partitioned into 4 partitions. One is to back up my iMac, one is to back up my son's MacBook, one is an alternate boot drive, and the fourth where I can put large volume data files.)
If Windows doesn't "ask" to partition/format the drive, then you just need to go into the Windows Explorer and right-click on the drive and choose Format, if you just want the whole drive as one partition.
If you want more than one, there is a Disk Management tool in Windows. The best way to get there is to go to Windows Help and type "disk management" and select Using Disk Management and there is a link in step 1 to Open Disk Management. Then in the tree, select Disk Management, and then select the new drive and choose the partition sizes.
Do I just copy everything from my hard drive to this unit?
You have two basic choices: clone the whole system, which will let you "reconstitute" the system, or just back up all your data. I prefer the latter in Windows, because any new system will probably have new hardware anyway, which requires new drivers, so it is more trouble than it's worth. So, I would just back up the data.
The other question would be in the backup process itself. Am I correct in assuming software would be necessary to automatically do backups? Or is it a matter of manually transferring data to the external hard drive? That might prove cumbersome (for me) to religiously do on a regular basis.
I think 3rd party software is the best way to go, as long as the backup data is not put into some proprietary file type -- it needs to be fully accessible from any computer, with or without a specific program. There is a Backup Wizard in Windows that I have never used -- because in the past, MS made you use the same version of Windows to access the data. This may be different now? Can someone else speak to this?
In the past, I have used SecondCopy to back up my data -- you can set up daily and weekly backups, and you can either use incremental or full backups. It was pretty reliable, and did not get stopped with system or network changes; like some programs did.
When retrieving info from the external drive, is it like getting info from a floppy or flash drive?
Yes, if the drive is plugged in and turned on, it shows up in Windows Explorer just like the hard drive(s) inside the computer case, or a flash drive, etc. It will have slower transfer times, but with USB 2 and FireWire, it is much faster than with USB 1. The eSATA option (if your computer has this) is just as fast as the internal SATA hard drives; that is to say very fast.
The hard drives I like are either the Samsung F3 (500GB per platter and 7200RPM - very fast and quiet
http://tinyurl.com/yj7bdtc ), or the Seagate 5900RPM (if you want huge capacity
http://tinyurl.com/yccdgy5 ).
The external enclosures I like are all/mostly aluminum. For the purposes of backing up your computer, you can get one with a SATA internal connection, and with at least a USB 2 external connection. If you have FireWire or eSATA, then those are preferable to use since you won't use up a USB port and they might be faster.
Some are available with both IDE and SATA internal connections -- which would be useful to have for accessing any old drives you may have, including those that are in your computer. Because sometimes, the boot sector on a C: drive can fail (so you cannot boot) but the data on it can still be accessed by using this external enclosure and another working computer.
Aluminum, internal SATA, external USB 2 & eSATA:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817155013
Aluminum, internal SATA, external USB 2 & eSATA w/ front power switch:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817347015
Aluminum, internal IDE & SATA, external USB 2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817388002