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dadiOH
em21 said:What is the name of the backup program are you using.
I was trying to use the Windows Backup Utility found in System tools.
what is the model (and number) of your WD external drive?
My external hard drive 250GB My Passport Essential from WD,
What is currently on it?
I have some pictures and music, not a whole lot, but important things
to me.
How many partitions are on it?
I don't know. How do I find out?
How much free space does it have?
It shows 226 GB free space
The simplest thing for you would be to forget about the Windows Backup
Utility (or any other) and...
1. Assure that your drive is plugged in
2. Press the Windows key + E simultaneously. That opens Windows
Explorer...there are other ways to open it, use whatever suits you.
3. Resize the Explorer window so it only occupies about half of your monitor
them browse to your My Passport Essential drive in the left hand pane of
Windows Explorer. It probably has the drive letter D: If your CD/DVD drive
is D: then look for E:. You can assure you have found the right one by
checking the size...right click it and click "Properties".
4. Select it by left clicking on it then click on the right hand pane. Make
a new folder naming it, perhaps, "My Backup".
5. Open another instance of Windows Explorer and resize it as you did the
first one. Your goal is to be able to see all of each Explorer window.
6. In the second Explorer window, browse to where you have the material you
want to back up. With luck, all your pictures will be in the folder named
"My Pictures" and your music in "My Music".
7. Once you find the folders containing your photos, select it clicking then
drag it to the new folder you made on your backup drive (Explorer window
#1). Windows will copy the selected folder and contents to your backup
drive. Repeat for any other folders/files you want to back up.
8. You now have "just in case" copies of the things you said were important
to you. You can "restore" them to your main drive in the same way...just
copy over.
Note that you *cannot* back up your installed programs or Windows
installation in this manner which is why people were talking about imaging
software such as Acronis True Image. It is not a bad idea to make images
but for what you want to do it is overkill...plain old copying will do you
just fine and there should be no learning curve as there would be with
imaging.
BTW, if you don't know how many partitions are on your backup drive it is
safe to assume there is only one. Not really important for your purpose
anyway.
--
dadiOH
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