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.

lyban- That's a good choice...even for people who are computer savvy. External hard drives are not very expensive and not having to switch back and forth is a good thing. Take a look at the Toshiba external drives on Amazon...they get consistently ggod reviews and the setup is essentially automatic.

Go to control panel and open System Icon - Hardware Tab - Device Manager - Click the + Plus sign for Sounds.......... - Right click Realtek AC 97 (Or whatever Sound you have) - Left click - Update Driver. To update you will need the CD that came with your computer. First right click your speaker Icon and open Volume control and make sure your sound is not muted. Located on your lower right. If you don't have a speaker Icon go to the Control Panel and check your sound. Windows XP See if your sound has been stopped in Services Under Windows Audio. Start - Control Panel - Open Administrative Tools - Open Component Services - Click Services (Local) and Scrowl down the list to Windows Audio to see if it says - Started. If stopped Left click Windows Audio and click restart. - Or Right click Windows Audio - left click Properties - Left click Start If still no sound next try this But be careful because your in the Registry and you can harm your computer. You should make a Registry Backup first. Go to Start>Run, type in regedit and hit ok. Navagate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound "Beep" and "ExtendedSounds" should both be set to "yes" in order for the speakers to work. Before changing the Registry you need to make a Backup. You can download ERUNT and make a backup. This is best but it has a feature named Optimize. Don't use it. After using it, it took me 2 days to get my computer back to normal. Start - Run Type regedit - My Computer should be highlighted Go to File - Left top - Left click Export - The word Backup - Save. When time to use it don't go to were it's saved, go back to regedit. Start - Run - regedit - OK - File - Import - Right click Backup - Left click Merge. Anyway that's the way I do it.

Many thanks, everybody, for your advice! That does help a lot. Yes, my photo files do seem to be saved, as they are still there when I turn the drive off and back on. Actually, once I turn the drive off the little "safely remove hardware" icon disappears from my computer screen. So I suspect it's only available when the computer can detect extra hardware plugged in. So is it okay to remove the drive from the computer, as long as the drive is turned off, without going through that "safely remove" thing first? To answer some of your questions, no, there was no pamphlet included with the drive so I didn't get the key code. It is a 500 GB drive and I think it was about 99 dollars that I paid for it. Though, as there was actually only 465 GB free on it, I knew there must be something else on there somewhere--even if it wasn't showing up! I had looked at the Seagate web site before, and I think I saw something on there which said they would send you the software if you gave them the serial number of the drive and a little other information. Though, at the time, I thought they met the installation software and I didn't think I needed that, as it had installed okay. So maybe I'll look into that--or demand a pamphlet from the seller!