It's a simple USB drive that I use for backup, and mine takes place automatically every morning at 3:15am. I actually had to alter the partion sizes on it after I replaced the data drive with the big one, because without really thinking about it too clearly, I created a 'data' and a 'spare' partition on the new drive, that were just a little larger than the partitions that I had already on the backup drive, so of course, the first time the new drive with its restored data on, came to be backed up, the backup software rejected the operation, because the destination partition just wasn't quite big enough by a few hundred meg, to accommodate the source drive. Doh! Still, it was just a case of reformat the external drive with partitions that were big enough, plus a bit to allow for future bad blocks, and then creating a new backup set, and then restarting the backup scheduler. Know what you mean about the speed though. It took it 21 hours to transfer all the data back to the USB drive. Just a few minutes a night again now, as only the changed files / folders get included.
Arfa