Ken, I actually have 2 physical hard drives in my computer, each formatted and partitioned into logical drives. Wikipedia says the following about it: Purposes for Partitioning * Separation of the operating system files from user files * Having an area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging * Keeping frequently used programs and data near each other. * Having cache and log files separate from other files. These can change size dynamically and rapidly, potentially making a file system full. * Use of multi-booting setups, which allow users to have more than one operating system on a single computer. For example, one could install Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or others on different partitions of the same hard disk and have a choice of booting into any operating system (supported by the hardware) at power-up. * Protecting or isolating files, to make it easier to recover a corrupted file system or operating system installation. If one partition is corrupted, none of the other file systems are affected, and the drive's data may still be salvageable. Having a separate partition for read-only data also reduces the chances of the file system on this partition becoming corrupted. * Raising overall computer performance on systems where smaller file systems are more efficient. For instance, large hard drives with only one NTFS file system typically have a very large sequentially-accessed Master File Table (MFT) and it generally takes more time to read this MFT than the smaller MFTs of smaller partitions. Also, ACDSee does the following: Get organized with ACDSee With ACDSee, organize the way that works best for you. Organize your Windows® file folders, add keywords and ratings, edit your metadata, and create your own categories. Assign images to as many categories as you like without duplicating files. NEW! Use multi-word keywords like ÂTrip to Mexico to make finding images even easier. So, while the file name stays as it was first assigned by the camera, through the use of keywords and categories you can perform easy searches. And yes, I do add the cultivar's name as a keyword and may add more than one to make it show up in more than just a search for its name only. If for example I want to search for pictures of Revolution unfurling I can quite easily do that.

I still haven't done anything with the drive as yet. I also have Acronis True Image, version 9. I have used it with an Iomega external drive that I have with my desktop computer. But there are things about it that I find confusing. That's why I was wondering about just using the Windows 7 backup since I thought I understood that it was an imaging type of backup. So what is the difference between "ghosting", and "imaging"? Do both do "clones" of the OS? I want to keep things as simple as possible. Owbist, if I do not intend to use the software that is on the drive, I do not need to copy it to the computer HDD do I? Yes, I do understand using a different drive letter for the external drive. With my desktop, that happened automatically. Don't know whether the Acronis software did that or the Iomega drive itself. I have three USB ports, so I think those have drive letters also. I just don't want to have to be re-doing something that should be fairly simple (I hope).

bus driver: The chances are you are not going to find any big files but if you look in the right places, you WILL find billions of small files. I wouldn't recommend loading anything else on your computer until you have cleaned the hard drive off a bit. 1: clean out your Temporary internet files. In IE that option will be under tools, Internet options. In Firefox it is under Tools, Options, Privacy. 2. Delete other Temporary files. Click Start, Search, All files and folders. Type TEMP in the first search box and click search. Anything in the Temp folders can be deleted safely. Any file with a .tmp extention can be deleted. A warning though, there may be some files that can not be deleted there as that is where most virus scanning software put their processing logs. Those will have a very recent date on them. Don't worry though, Windows will yell at you and tell you when it can't delete a file. 3. Go to control panel, double click "add or remove programs" a. Look through the list that populates for programs you no longer use and uninstall them. b. Look for programs that you don't recognize.. do a online search to determine what they are and if you think you don't need them, uninstall them also. 4. Empty your Recycle Bin. 5. Do a disk defrag. The default windows will work.. there are others that are better. Right click on your start button, click explore. Right click on "local drive (C:)" click on Properties. Click the second tab, Tools, Defrag will be the middle choice. Let us know what your disk space is after you have done that.

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.