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 should be able to see all directories on the external drive. It may be in a different spot than you are expecting. Go to the root of the drive in windows explorer and click the search icon (or press CTL-F) and enter owner. Then click Advanced options and change type of file to folder. Make sure Search System Folders, Search Hidden Files and Folders and Search Subfolders are all checked and click Search. It will probably take a while.

I use a Western Digital 80 Gb, external hard drive w/ USB2 conection. This drive has its own power source and does not swamp the USB port. (Most USB ports are protected from shorting. If a device pulls too much current from the port, it shuts down and a re-boot is required to get the port running again. I have a 120 Gb Passport drive for my laptop and the inrush of the drive motor will shut down the port. A "Y" connector is required so that the disc drive can pull power from 2 ports.) To back up my importnt data files, I do not use a "backup" utility that uses data compression and put a group of files into a file set. This harks back to tape drives and limited storge space. I simply copy my important data files using the same folder (directory) structure as on the parent drive. Now, the back up copies are readily available by a simple drag and drop operation. For example, you may have financial data that changes daily. Its simple matter to periodically write copies of the current files to the back up space.

The documents and pictures are (mostly) still there. When something is deleted, all that really occurs is that the first letter of the file name is dropped and the file becomes "invisible." You should be able to recover most or all of the files with the right software. However, if you keep using your computer, you stand a good chance of over-writing the files because the space they occupy is "free space" as far as the computer is concerned. My advice: use another computer and do a Google search for "recover deleted files" to find some software that works for you. It's been several year since I've had to hunt for deleted files, so I'm not up-to-date on what's out there. If possible, install the software you select on the new drive so that you don't over-write more accidentally deleted files when you install the new software.