Help, new user, need to reinstall op system!

[Dee]

Hoping someone can please advise. I've read a ton of info from the forum but did not find any other posts about this. Before I go spending more money to do what I thought this Seagate Freeagent Go would do out of the box (such as installing the backup data tool and the Argo needed to do that ), I need to make sure I do things in the right order because I'm using my new Seagate FreeAgentGo with Ceedo software because I'm backing up and have to reinstall my operating system.
If I download these other programs in addition to the Ceedo and Seagate that I already have, what will happen after I wipe my harddrive clean and reinstall windows? I'm thinking that I will have to reinstall all of these programs again, and not sure if that means I will have to pay for them again too or not. (Licensing issues?) My guess is that the backup and Argo can be installed directly to the external drive, but I think the Ceedo and Seagate installed onto my laptop itself. Please walk me through how to handle this. My darn computer is going to end up crashing before I get this all figured out. (I couldn't find anything in forums about this). Also, I found info about Office in another thread, but it got a little too deep for me. I have Outlook that I need to backup too (not Express). If I get Argo, will I be able to install in on my Ceedo too?
I need to do this asap so please help!
Thank you!

[keith]

Hi, Dee. Welcome to the forum.

If your Seagate drive is one of the first-gen FreeAgents, it comes with two separate software bundles:

1. The Seagate FreeAgent tools

2. Ceedo Personal (without Argo)

These two bundles are separate, the FreeAgent tools being provided and supported by Seagte, and Ceedo Personal being provided and supported by Ceedo.

The FreeAgent tools come with a synchronization tool that allows you to sync host and USB drive. However, I would not recommend that you use this as a complete backup solution. There are other options out there such as GFI Backup (http://www.gfi.com/downloads/register.aspx?pid=bkuphm&lid=en), which is free - you just need to register to obtain the download. You can install GFI on your PC and use it to backup all of your data to your Seagate drive before you reinstall Windows.

If at some point you have to wipe your Seagate drive and reinstall Ceedo, Ceedo itself will pre-activate for you according to your drive's parameters. There are two ways of obtaining the Ceedo installer:

1. If you want to restore your drive to its original factory image, you would need to contact Seagate to request a download link for their recovery tool which will reinstall the FreeAgent tools and Ceedo. The version of Ceedo that shipped with your drive, and will be restored using the FreeAgent tools, does not include Argo.

2. You can download the latest version of Ceedo Personal (http://www.ceedo.com/download/installing-ceedo-personal.html) and install it on your drive. This official version of Ceedo does come with Argo as part of the package. Argo cannot be uninstalled from the official Ceedo version. This is because when you purchase a Ceedo Personal license, an Argo license is included.

Argo is the Ceedo application installer. It allows you to install your own standard Windows applications. There is a write-up in the wiki that will provide you with details on how Argo works and step-by-step instructions for using it.

You can use Argo to install MS Office 2003 and 2007 into Ceedo. But... and this is a BIG but... due to the licensing mechanism that Microsoft uses, you would need to install the Enterprise version of Office to be able to move your Ceedo drive to another PC and use Office without breaking the activation. The reason for this is that the MS licensing mechanism makes use of hardware identifiers on the host PC for activation, and moving your drive to a different PC means that the hardware identifiers are different, and your Office installation becomes deactivated because of this.

With regards to reinstalling your Ceedo-installed applications, if you have kept copies of your product keys and licenses for the software that you will be installing on your Ceedo drive, you would not have to repurchase these applications. If you are unable to find your product keys for some of your applications, you should be able to obtain these from the software publishers you purchased the licenses from.

To create a backup of your Outlook e-mail databases, open Outlook and click on File (in the menu bar) and go to Import and Export.

In the "Import and Export" wizard, select "Export to a file" and click the Next> button.

In the "Export to a File" window, select "Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next>

I the next window, select the folder to export from, usually the "Personal Folders" icon at the top of the list.

Check the box labeled, "Include sub-folders," and click Next>

On the next screen, "Export Personal Folders" (this will be labeled using whatever folder you selected), click the Browse... button and browse to where you wish to export your e-mail databases to, and also provide a name for the backed up .pst file.

You also have the options to "Replace Duplicates with Items exported," "Allow duplicate items to be created" and "Do not export duplicates." If you are unsure of what to select here, just leave the default setting (Replace duplicates with items exported" as-is.

Click the Finish button. Depending on how much data is stored in your e-mail database files, the export process can take a while.

To import your backed up .pst file into Outlook once you've reinstalled Outlook after your Windows reinstallation, Click File -> Import and Export -> Import from another program or file -> Personal Folder File (.pst) -> Browse to the backed up .pst file and select it -> Finish.

It's late, or rather, early in the morning here (05:05 A.M.), and I'm pretty beat, so I've probably missed a few things in your post. Someone else will likely pick it up if I have and take it from here. :)