I got a very nice 750gb serial ATA drive for $60 from Amazon in Feb 2010. A place called JDMadera on ebay sells a removable drive carriage for it for $13. Buy the two and you can put in and out that or any drive (serial) or get one each, serial / parallel and pop in / out any drive. This will give you free space and help you manage your data , safely, with a way to store it if you want it safe. Look on gogle for any 'file I can delete safely'. Don't take it's word for it. read and undersand before you do anything. However anything with a tmp at the end of the filename is OK to delete. If you're unsure do this: RAR or ZIP up all of the files that are .tmp files from any one directory so that when you later unzip them they can all go back to that same directory. Makes housekeeping easy.. Then after zipping or rarring them delete them (not the rar or zip file of course). If after a month or two you don't seem to need them of course then delete them. That's a method to help you save space. But I'd spend the $60 or $75 and get the peace of mind of having backup, safety, and anew thinking process to help you manage what will ALWAYS bea a constant problem Good luck. Andre

here is what i got from the analysis: Analysed : "D:\" April 12 2010, 22:47.21 Processed in 1 minute 46 seconds =================================================== Number of Files : 94276 Number of Folders : 19066 Size of Files : 23.14GB Size of Files (on disk) : 23.33GB Disk space wasted : 193.25MB Null files : 105 Empty folders : 0 Average File Size : 257.34K Average Files/Folder : 4.94 Largest Folder : \Windows\ (11.43GB, 67% of files) Largest File : D:\pagefile.sys (3.93GB) User with largest share : SYSTEM (9.69GB, 20%) : Quantity Size Programs : 2608 :: 2.54GB (11%) System : 21342 :: 15.21GB (66%) Graphics : 11383 :: 279.95MB (1%) Movie : 202 :: 298.27MB (1%) Audio : 704 :: 66.73MB ( Office : 6406 :: 159.68MB ( Programming : 378 :: 4.78MB ( Compressed : 4159 :: 318.93MB (1%) Other : 47094 :: 4.29GB (19%) Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes =================================================== Analysed : "C:\" April 12 2010, 22:51.31 Processed in 1 minute 37 seconds =================================================== Number of Files : 82894 Number of Folders : 15777 Size of Files : 17.37GB Size of Files (on disk) : 17.53GB Disk space wasted : 167.86MB Null files : 1768 Empty folders : 0 Average File Size : 219.67K Average Files/Folder : 5.25 Largest Folder : \Windows\ (10.87GB, 74% of files) Largest File : C:\hiberfil.sys (2.95GB) User with largest share : TrustedInstaller (9.21GB, 66%) : Quantity Size Programs : 2214 :: 797.99MB (4%) System : 17599 :: 10.46GB (60%) Graphics : 7221 :: 481.60MB (3%) Movie : 159 :: 555.87MB (3%) Audio : 669 :: 65.39MB ( Office : 9583 :: 128.44MB ( Programming : 374 :: 4.70MB ( Compressed : 78 :: 356.16MB (2%) Other : 44997 :: 4.57GB (26%) Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes ===================================================

Luis it would appear that your hard drive is formatted in Fat32. As your error message notes, it can only create a backup up to 4 gigs making it useless for you. To check your computer click Start, click My computer the RIGHT click on the C:\ drive and click Properties at the bottom of the new window. Now look near the top and you will see whether your drive is Fat32 or the more Efficient NTFS. If your internal hard drive is either Maxtor or Seagate you can download free back up software from their site. This is a modified version of Acronis True Image and is a large file.

Hi Azinoh, Thank you for your advice. The amount of data is over 1TB once the video files are included. Pictures and text (word or pdf) files are much simpler - less than 10GB. I already have a new external hard drive attached to my pc. I've been copying-backing up files to there. I also have them backed up on the NAS - but I'm worried about not being able to access those if I can't figure out how to set up my synology diskstation right away. So I wanted to be sure to have access to the important files right away. I'm confident I can access the files on the new external hard drive from my new computer. I'll search the Canon site for my model. It's not that old - manufactured in the Windows 7-8 days. I actually thought it might have been too new for my XP computer to make that set up easy. Now I know I can check that out on Canon's site. In terms of putting the failing second drive in the new pc, I agree. I'm not certain it's actually failing. When this happened with another drive 2 or 3 years ago, I think it was a healthy drive. I think I was on the Tivo forums about this - and people thought the drive was fine. I don't recall why more files weren't displaying. So if this winds up being a limitation of my desktop's explorer program - or something that isn't a flaw of the drive, it might be worth keeping. But I never did risk it with that old drive, even though more knowledgeable people than me thought it was safe to use. So I probably won't use this one either. But I will try to pay more attention to what the problem is. Is Macrium Reflect something I can use on this XP computer now to copy files? would it be faster than using explorer? Thanks. Lynn.