Hello,
I have a HPpavilion laptop, XP Home 2002 SP 2, with a 98 GB hard
drive.
Just bought a maxtor basics portable 160 GB USB drive.
So use windows explorer to list all the folders, and files, on the C
drive, select all, and ctrl-C.
then select the F: drive where the maxtor lives, and ctrl-v.
Get a copying popup saying "Preparing to Copy", After a few minutes
get a further popup entitled Error Copying File or Folder with the
message "Cannot copy file:".
So I format the maxtor - no problems - and run chkdsk against the C
drive - no problems.

Any suggestion of what might be the problem? Or even better the
solution?

TIA

K

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:eb73e88a-4aad-4e55-9dd8-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hello,
> I have a HPpavilion laptop, XP Home 2002 SP 2, with a 98 GB hard
> drive.
> Just bought a maxtor basics portable 160 GB USB drive.
> So use windows explorer to list all the folders, and files, on the C
> drive, select all, and ctrl-C.
> then select the F: drive where the maxtor lives, and ctrl-v.
> Get a copying popup saying "Preparing to Copy", After a few minutes
> get a further popup entitled Error Copying File or Folder with the
> message "Cannot copy file:".
> So I format the maxtor - no problems - and run chkdsk against the C
> drive - no problems.
>
> Any suggestion of what might be the problem? Or even better the
> solution?
>
> TIA
>
> K

Perhaps your file is larger than 4 GBytes and perhaps your
destination partition is formatted under FAT32. Can't do this -
you must format it under NTFS.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:eb73e88a-4aad-4e55-9dd8-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hello,
> I have a HPpavilion laptop, XP Home 2002 SP 2, with a 98 GB hard
> drive.
> Just bought a maxtor basics portable 160 GB USB drive.
> So use windows explorer to list all the folders, and files, on the C
> drive, select all, and ctrl-C.
> then select the F: drive where the maxtor lives, and ctrl-v.
> Get a copying popup saying "Preparing to Copy", After a few minutes
> get a further popup entitled Error Copying File or Folder with the
> message "Cannot copy file:".
> So I format the maxtor - no problems - and run chkdsk against the C
> drive - no problems.
>
> Any suggestion of what might be the problem? Or even better the
> solution?
>
> TIA
>
> K


You're not going to be able to simply copy and paste the contents of your entire
C drive to your Maxtor portable drive. There are a number of files that Windows
has in use that it will balk at copying. You'll receive an error message and the
procedure will stop.

An alternative is to use the xcopy command with the appropriate switches. A far
better approach is to use an imaging program such as Acronis True Image or
Norton Ghost. You might also want to check to see if Maxtor supplied a backup
program with your new drive.

Good luck

Nepatsfan

"Nepatsfan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:eb73e88a-4aad-4e55-9dd8-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Hello,
>> I have a HPpavilion laptop, XP Home 2002 SP 2, with a 98 GB hard
>> drive.
>> Just bought a maxtor basics portable 160 GB USB drive.
>> So use windows explorer to list all the folders, and files, on the C
>> drive, select all, and ctrl-C.
>> then select the F: drive where the maxtor lives, and ctrl-v.
>> Get a copying popup saying "Preparing to Copy", After a few minutes
>> get a further popup entitled Error Copying File or Folder with the
>> message "Cannot copy file:".
>> So I format the maxtor - no problems - and run chkdsk against the C
>> drive - no problems.
>>
>> Any suggestion of what might be the problem? Or even better the
>> solution?
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> K
>
>
> You're not going to be able to simply copy and paste the contents of your
> entire C drive to your Maxtor portable drive. There are a number of files
> that Windows has in use that it will balk at copying. You'll receive an
> error message and the procedure will stop.
>
> An alternative is to use the xcopy command with the appropriate switches.
> A far better approach is to use an imaging program such as Acronis True
> Image or Norton Ghost. You might also want to check to see if Maxtor
> supplied a backup program with your new drive.
>

xcopy.exe is not an alternative to copying files that are locked. It can
be told not to stop on errors but it won't copy locked files. As you say,
imaging programs will get around this issue.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a HPpavilion laptop, XP Home 2002 SP 2, with a 98 GB hard
> drive.
> Just bought a maxtor basics portable 160 GB USB drive.
> So use windows explorer to list all the folders, and files, on the C
> drive, select all, and ctrl-C.
> then select the F: drive where the maxtor lives, and ctrl-v.
> Get a copying popup saying "Preparing to Copy", After a few minutes
> get a further popup entitled Error Copying File or Folder with the
> message "Cannot copy file:".
> So I format the maxtor - no problems - and run chkdsk against the C
> drive - no problems.
>
> Any suggestion of what might be the problem? Or even better the
> solution?

The "problem" is you cannot do that (as you've found out) - the system won't
let you, for several reasons.

Why do you want to get the contents of your C: drive over to the F: drive?
Stuff works swell just where it's at.