Backing up C: on an external HDD

Iriah

My computer's been having some troubles lately with doing simple things like not crashing when traffic flows through a wireless adapter, so I'm going to format the hard drive and reinstall XP. So I don't lose my year of software and so forth I'm going to make a copy of my hard drive on another hard drive

(if I'm doing anything wrong please tell me)

I've got a LaCie external HDD and I've used the provided software to make a copy of my C drive on the disk. When I go to the folder on the new HDD it's empty. Right clicking on the folder and going to properties tells me it's 186 gigabytes of empty.

Que?

Anyway, can anyone shed some light on this situation, and by all means tell me I'm an idiot and correct my method of getting this shit sorted? My PC is really pissing me off.

VThornheart

Ouch. =( By "New HDD", do you mean that LaCie external?

Is there a chance that the HDD got disconnected/the power got turned off before the transfer was complete? Have you tried copying it to that external drive a second time?

Iriah

No, the transfer was uninterrupted. Would using the software again work or would it just give me another 186 gigs of "TRY AGAIN!"?

edit - that's a silly question. I'll try it again but there's got to be something else that can help.

VThornheart

Aye... usually those utilities are fairly straightforward. Have you tried to read the external HDD on a different computer than the one you're about to format?

Oh, also... Have you been remembering to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature before unplugging the external drive? I remember I lost a USB drive worth of data doing that once (unplugging it without doing the "Safely remove hardware" first).

There's another one, and I'm not sure if this is the case for you (and for external HDDs), but I noticed it was a problem with Flash Drives and Windows XP sometimes, so it may translate. Did you give the drive your own volume name, or did you try at any point to change what the icon for the external drive would appear as in Windows Explorer? I know it sounds strange, but I nuked a flash drive twice accidentally before I realized that it was only happening when I tried to do the aforementioned tasks. I stopped trying to do them, and it has read normally ever since.

Other than that, I'm not sure... it should be a simple file copying application, and it should just work. Maybe someone else has had experience with his specific external HDD?

AtomBomb

Since you're not planning on cloning the drive from the external to the internal I wouldn't use the included software. You could just do a simple copy and paste to the external from the internal. You're not going to get system and hidden files, but you will have your data. After you're reformat/reinstall you can copy your data back. You'll need to reinstall all your programs, but you were going to have to do that anyway.

edit- Oh, and if you have multiple users on the PC, make sure you're signed in under admin.