Clickfree Automatic Backup C2N 500 GB USB 3.0 Network Ready Portable External Hard Drive, 527N3 (Piano Black)

Revised 1/30/2012 - We removed this as a backup device on our office network. The backups ran fine; but we wre unable to see any XP computers when browsing with MyComputer. Clickfree tech support said our problem was likely a firewall issue and that the product was intended for home networks. I note that the info on the sales page says it is for "home" networks.We will play aorund some more but are very disappointed. We had two different engineers try installations using two different Clickfrees. Both had identical results.My original review is below********************************************************************My engineering firm has an office network of 25 computers running XP, Vista, and Windows 7. We do all of our own system administration and system maintenance. For the last fifteen years, we have written our own backup scripts to backup all systems over the LAN to a PC reserved for backups. This network version of Clickfree will replace our present backup system.Installation is very simple but takes a bit of time. You start by going to each computer for which backup is desired and connecting the Clickfree with the included USB cable (for power and data). The driver software is automatically loaded. There is no CD and printed installation instructions are limited to two or three paragraphsSelect the file types or folders to be backed up. Do the initial backup. Go to the next computer and select folders, which may be the same or different from the first, and do the initial backup. Repeat for each computer. Select the days and times when you want the backups to be completed automatically in the future. Setup is then complete; and backups will run at the chosen times without attention provided the Clickfree is left connected to any computer on the network.Computers that are not on at backup time will be skipped. New files only will be created or overwritten if they are changed since the last successful backup of the file.Orderly backup requires orderly storage schemes. Since 1990 we have partitioned every computer as follows:Drive C - Operating system, Office, and other shrink-wrapped software for which CDs are on hand. This drive is NOT backed up.Drive D - Administrative item - letters, forms, stuff that has no other home. This drive is backed up.Drive E - Things that are of the nature of a data base - data bases, photos, music. This drive if backed up.Drive F - Projects, Work Items - Folders and files for the principal work activities done on the computer, varies by department. This drive is backed up.Drive G - Scratch Drive - Odds and ends, temporary copies. Our rule is that the network administrator may delete all drive G items at any time so put nothing here that you cannot afford to lose. This drive is NOT backed up.If you follow the rules above (skipping backup of the operating systems, etc.), you will find that few computers have more than 5 GB of files in the initial backup. With a 1 TB capacity, networks of 2 - 50 computers can be backed up with one Clickfree. The daily backup (at 1 AM) for our twenty-five computers takes about 75 minutes. (The initial backups of the twenty-five computers required a total elapsed time of ten hours; but attention was only required for ten minutes per computer.)If you fill a Clickfree, put a sticker on it with computer names and dates of use, wrap it in plastic, store it safely, and buy another.We used earlier versions of Clickfree that did only one computer each for three systems of very high value files; and these Clickfrees are running fine after two years off use.

I have had my Clickfree for at least two months now, and it works wonderfully. But, I wanted to warn anyone who is not tech savvy to think about not making the purchase. I was having trouble backing up my second computer wirelessly. I emailed customer support. It took them over two weeks to respond back, and the response was of no help. I had already figured out how to do it by messsing with every possible thing in the software. The information that comes with the product, and the Clickfree website, were of no help. Basically, by the end, I knew more than the customer support staff. If you are good at figuring things out for yourself, then you will enjoy the ease of backing up that this product provides.

This has been an incredibly frustrating experience. I was looking for a backup solution that would work with our two laptops at home. Mac and PC. The Mac is using the latest OSX Lion.Problems started immediately when plugged in. Software install started right away and seemed to install with no problem. Then the computer restarted and I kept getting NTFS-3G error and the drive couldn't be mounted. Clickfree drive kept wanting to install the app. I eventually found FUSE for OSX that helped solve the NTFS-3G error and drive finally mounted and let me start a backup. I have about 80gb of data on my Mac which is not a ton of data. The backup took 40 hours! I just let it keep going because it was showing progress file by file. 40 hours is ridiculous for a full backup.The backup finally completed but now when I plug in the drive, it wants to install the software again and I can't run the software. The disk does mount and nested in numerous directories labeled 's' for some odd reason are my backup files. So the backup did work but the software doesn't. The startup program also installed an icon in my finder bar but it can't launch the program.This has been a week of frustration and I'm sending this drive back.Oh, I also didn't do enough research. My goal was to find a network drive that I could just connect to my router and backup my laptops. However, for this network drive to work, it has to be physically connected to a computer that is on the network. That doesn't work for me.I also have a Apple Time Capsule which would be perfect but I'm having trouble installing that with our Verizon FIOS router. No wonder people don't back up often. Someday, they will truly invent a simple and thoughtless way of constantly backing up multiple network computers that an average person can understand. I thought this was the answer but they have a lot of work to do on the software front and it doesn't connect to the router to backup a household.

I like this product. It performs as advertised, most of the time. God help you though if you need personal technical assistance. I have a computer business and have installed quite a few Click Free units. Then I had a problem and thought I would contact them. I waited for over a half hour for someone to help me. All I got was, "we are experiencing high volume calls" plus many suggestions to use the internet to solve the problem. Must be having a lot of people with lots of problems!\I finally gave up and sent them an e mail which they kept suggesting I do. Wonder how long before I get an answer? Keep tuned.J.M. Lavin

Great way to automatically back up every computer in your network. Software user interface makes it easy to retrieve individual files from a previous save and restore that specific file version just as easy as "copy & paste" it back where it came from originally. Great "do-over" when you've just accidentally overwritten a file, or the current document/file becomes corrupted or non-functional. DOWNSIDE-Needs to be hardwired into one computer in the network in order to maintain automatic backup.CAN'T WAIT FOR A WIRELESS VERSION