text: why does dantz retrospect show internet activity while backing up my hard drive to an external hard drive? i notice contstant internet activity while backing up to an external drive.  makes me think that all my data is backing up to some unknown server.  i do not have a server.  so, i shut down my high speed internet connection and retrospect stops the back up.  why is this happening.  how can i backup my computer with retrsopect without worrying about my data going somewhere i don't know?  thank you for your response. your external drive is probably set as a network drive, so when you shut down your network, it stops.