I am going to get a whole house surge protector. But should I also invest in getting "good" surge protectors for my electronics (tv and related peripherals, computer and peripherals?). If so, could someone point me toward a good one. I wouldn't know what makes a surge protector good (and think just getting expensive is not the way to make the selection). I do have surge protectors in all those areas, but don't think we selected them with any real knowledge. Thank you. Lynn. PS - and my efforts to copy are delayed - bc. I can't find the replacement drive. We received so many packages last week - and during the power outage - so I was opening and putting things away by flashlight - and so far, I can't find it. have this scary feeling that my husband or cleaning woman thought the box was trash and tossed it out. Hope not.

I still haven't done anything with the drive as yet. I also have Acronis True Image, version 9. I have used it with an Iomega external drive that I have with my desktop computer. But there are things about it that I find confusing. That's why I was wondering about just using the Windows 7 backup since I thought I understood that it was an imaging type of backup. So what is the difference between "ghosting", and "imaging"? Do both do "clones" of the OS? I want to keep things as simple as possible. Owbist, if I do not intend to use the software that is on the drive, I do not need to copy it to the computer HDD do I? Yes, I do understand using a different drive letter for the external drive. With my desktop, that happened automatically. Don't know whether the Acronis software did that or the Iomega drive itself. I have three USB ports, so I think those have drive letters also. I just don't want to have to be re-doing something that should be fairly simple (I hope).

Pkponder - thank you for asking your son-in-law on my behalf. It may come to that. Glad to know the Windows version of my main desktop doesn't matter in terms of the NAS. I am going to use a Tivo to retrieve digital data for playing on the television. At this point, I think Tivo's can play Tivo format (which is how I record and store my video) and mpegs. I believe the Tivo is DNLA compliant device. I barely know what that is, but I think it means it can transfer different file formats. I know that I can view my digital pictures, videos and music on my television by retrieving them with my Tivo. I can also play the videos on my laptop. I have Tivo desktop software plus which can transcode any of the tivo videos to a format that can played on Ipads and ipods. Of course, I would have to change the format first. Maybe an NAS can do some of that on the fly - I have no idea. I don't think on the fly video transfer to Ipad and Ipod is that important. If my daughter is home, she has plenty of alternatives for viewing video. And if she wants to load her apple devices for travel, then we have time to get them to the right format. I think the Synology comes with it's own network operating system (which I think is some type of linux distribution). My question on the Raid will be what type. I'll have to learn the difference between Raid 0,1,5 and whatever else there is, so I can choose the appropriate type for me. Thanks. Lynn.

I reformatted the My Book - which went smoothly. The copied a short video. Again - worked well. Now I'm copying a whole bunch of videos - and it's taking time. I'm copying about 10-15 hours of standard definition tv shows. So far, it's been over an hour. I have no idea how long it will take via USB2 connection. The 30 minute video took less than 5 minutes. I have follow-up questions. I wonder what the best way is to back up these files. I just opened up My Documents and right-clicked one at a time - then chose the option to "send to" and selected drive e: my book. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but I don't know what it is. I tried to highlight more than one file at a time (using the shift key) - but it didn't seem to want to let me highlight more than one at a time. I also wonder if I send a file to MY Book - does that mean it's moved to My Book and the original isn't on my PC - or is it copied there? Raven - I know I should know this by now, but I don't. How do I find my firefox profiles and bookmarks files so I can copy them to the external drive? Lastly, is there a way to copy files to the external drive in such a way that I can get prompted if the file already exists? so I don't make a copy and have 2 copies in there? with many files (like pictures), I may get a prompt that says the file already exists - should I overwrite it or skip. Is there anything like that when copying files to the external drive? At some point, should I bite the bullet and buy a software program to do this. Western Digital tries to give trial periods for the following software : Memeo Autobackup, Memeo Autosync. Any reason to get these? Or any other software? Also, when I reformatted the drive, it wiped the drive clean. Is there anything (drivers, software?) I would need to download from Western Digital (to replace anything I might have erased). I know that the proprietary software that's sometimes loaded with these things (like cameras, printers) may not be necessary at all. Thanks. Lynn.