Very nice find, Doc. I'm using a WD640 GB main HDD and a 320GB external to back up on.

Free is good. Sometimes.

WOW !! Awsome, I have 2 WD's ....a 500 Gig and a 1 Terabyte. I've always had great performance with WD. Thanks Doc !! 

Welcome, Ace... I only have one, but hey... free is free!

Apart from the SSD, all my internal drives are WD, as are 3 my external ones... the Seagates are 'community' and contain all the videos of the extended family that I edit/convert for them.  However, I do have Acronis 2009, which I will update with the next edition, but mrs starkers also has 3 internal WD's and I'm sure she would appreciate checking out this version to if she wants Acronis to safeguard her data.

darn, I have a hitachi internal and that's the slowest part of my system, be really nice to just copy everything over to a new hard drive.

my external is WD but...

I think it's only for Internal HD's, Greg.

Seagate has backup software for their disks, I believe... 

For SSD's (and SMART won't accurately predict 'demise'), EaseUS backup software is free and maybe the beat, but for an image, you'll need an additional tool from their site.

I have 3 internals and 4 externals.

Nice find Doc...I'll be sure to put it to use.

Boogers. Mine is an external HDD, 1 TB. Oh well.

Interesting.

Very cool, I only use WD drives. All caviar black, 1 TB - 600 GB - 300 GB from less than a year old to 5 years old and all still running great.

That's okay, matey, Acronis backs up to external drives.  I have a 1tb WD USB3 that I use for backups of backups.

Yep. Acronis should do it for you... the WD version as well. The software has to be on an internal WD HDD, but backup to anywhere.

I have a half dozen external drives (they seem to collect all over the place).  Probably a couple are WDs.  Will check this out.