Thank you for taking the time to respond. My computer has been warning of USB device that it does not recognize every time I log in with my password. Today with your advice I unplugged the power lead from the drive and the computer did audible blip. Reconnected it. Unplugged the USB cord at the drive, audible blip, reconnected it audible blip. Disconnected the USB at the back of the computer with audible blip and reconnected at the front with audible blip and the light on the drive is now ON! My Book J now again shows up on the Computer window. Need to move the USB connection back to the back of the computer if possible as the two front USB ports are often used for other things. I am left wondering exactly what happened to make it stop working. Thanks for your help.

If you want to be secure, you should get something to securely erase the files. Otherwise, restoring them is trivial. I haven't used this one, but it was created by sysinternals, which has since been bought by Microsoft. Here is a blog on zdnet that recommends Secure Erase. Here is a link to one that got good reviews at cnet. You can find other examples if you google secure erase files.

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.

You wont need a tutorial or a handbook. They (USB) are plug and play just like a flash drive, except with external power. Most manufacturers pack the drives with back-up software. I bought a few Seagate's. They come with software that allows you to run periodic back-ups. I chose not to install that since I just use the drives as extra storage. The Seagate's have a power switch. I believe they all do. I guess whether you turn it off or not is dependent on how you will use the drive. If you are just using it to store downloads, pictures, music and video that you will not need constant access, turn it off. once you attach the drives AC power cord and the USB connector to your computer, if you are running WinXP it will automatically see it and add it as a removable drive. There are no difficult driver loadings necessary. It really is that easy. The drive will show up under 'my computer' or with whatever file manager you use. I suggest Total Commander.