Grandms - I checked hidden icons and it wasn't there. So I just did it by turning off the computer. Canibus - since I have an on/off switch, if I turn that off, is it sufficient to do that first - then disconnect the esata cable? I did unplug it - but may have turned it off, disconnected from pc, and then unplugged power. These are such important things - the order of shut down and disconnection. It's something I never thought about until very recently - and several people I've talked to since had no idea about the safely remove hardware button - or the order of disconnecting,powering down an external drive. The people I talked to just unplugged the drive - and so far they've been very, very lucky. When I reconnect the ext. drive, just want to be sure I have the order correct: computer off connect external drive to power adapter and plug it in connect esata (or usb) cable to computer turn on the hard drive (or do I turn it on before connecting to pc?) turn on the computer I'm asking bc. I just got an external drive for my daughter's computer and the instructions don't say anything about whether the computer has to be off or on before connecting the ext. drive. Thanks. Lynn.

what do you need to know? If it is installed and it shows up on your computer in the list of available drives then you just choose the files you want to move to it and either drag and drop them or right click them and choose copy to or move to and select the drive letter associated with the external drive. It should have come with some type of instructions, if not you can probably go to the western site and look up your model number and find the manual in pdf form.

fwiw Speaking of backups... recently playing around... Have 8gb ram so I used a freeware, RamDisk, a very small program, to make a RamDrive = 770mb for RediBoost & balance for Browser cache & windows low disk space avoidance. Anyhow while searching web for how people use ram disks trying to figure out what I was doing wrong .. initially my startup & shutdown times went up ... I came across a regedit setting on increasing hard disk cache.. for win 7 / vista anyhow.. maybe same for xp. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management LargeSystemCache default 0, changed to 1 = supposed to be hard drive cache. ......... after changes both graphics ratings went up .1 from 6.2 to 6.3 in Windows Experience Index Daily backup & image went from 17 minutes to 11 consistently . Just confirmed once now, it was the registry change that sped up the backups. Thats quite a time savings here ... I usually stop and twiddle my thumbs when backup runs. Thought some here may be interested in trying that registry tweak.

I reformatted the My Book - which went smoothly. The copied a short video. Again - worked well. Now I'm copying a whole bunch of videos - and it's taking time. I'm copying about 10-15 hours of standard definition tv shows. So far, it's been over an hour. I have no idea how long it will take via USB2 connection. The 30 minute video took less than 5 minutes. I have follow-up questions. I wonder what the best way is to back up these files. I just opened up My Documents and right-clicked one at a time - then chose the option to "send to" and selected drive e: my book. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but I don't know what it is. I tried to highlight more than one file at a time (using the shift key) - but it didn't seem to want to let me highlight more than one at a time. I also wonder if I send a file to MY Book - does that mean it's moved to My Book and the original isn't on my PC - or is it copied there? Raven - I know I should know this by now, but I don't. How do I find my firefox profiles and bookmarks files so I can copy them to the external drive? Lastly, is there a way to copy files to the external drive in such a way that I can get prompted if the file already exists? so I don't make a copy and have 2 copies in there? with many files (like pictures), I may get a prompt that says the file already exists - should I overwrite it or skip. Is there anything like that when copying files to the external drive? At some point, should I bite the bullet and buy a software program to do this. Western Digital tries to give trial periods for the following software : Memeo Autobackup, Memeo Autosync. Any reason to get these? Or any other software? Also, when I reformatted the drive, it wiped the drive clean. Is there anything (drivers, software?) I would need to download from Western Digital (to replace anything I might have erased). I know that the proprietary software that's sometimes loaded with these things (like cameras, printers) may not be necessary at all. Thanks. Lynn.