Needing to Prepare an Ext-Hard Drive for Backup of New Machine?

I am still trying to do things right (correctly) in this nice (nice to me) brand new machine.

Backing everything up (especially these days even more, I suppose??) is I am lead to believe, "JOB #1".

I am struggling with this.

As I mentioned in this recent thread http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=245273 I have an external Hard Drive that is 160 gigs, that I just happened to have recently wiped completely clean...empty.

Now, to the very best of my understanding, this (160GB) is PLENTY sufficient to perform at least "SOME" of what I need to do to back things up for this new 320 GB laptop, but the EXT-HD is NOT allowing me to do anything with it.

I believe I used ccleaner to wipe it, and it shows in its Properties as being "160GB" (or "142" or some such) of "Free Space". But I can't seem to get anything to go on to it.

Now, I think I have to "Format" it first, and I "thought" that I had, but then I've never really done that on my own before, so perhaps THAT is my problem here?

Please?

Thanks in advance,
g . . .

 

Please pardon this bump...simply wondering if this question/post would have been better posed in the "Hardware" forum. please?

*Admin please don't hesitate to move it if so . . .

grc

 

Follow the steps here for Windows 7. Just be sure you are doing this to your external drive and not your internal hard drive. If the drive in Disk Management shows as Not Initialized, you will have to initialize it first by right clicking and selecting initialize.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...2LzEvdGltZS8xMzE4NzY3NDc1L3NpZC9OT1F0Y0lHaw==

Edit: another good tutorial:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-partition-format.html

 

Thank you...however, it "appears", that perhaps I HAD already formatted this Ext. HD (?).

As soon as I connected it, the 7 OS prompted me with about four options, I selected "Back-up", and after about, oh I dunno, 10-15 (20?) minutes, the screenshot below was the result.

If this is the case, I suppose I have something else to do on CD and/or DVD drives/devices, please?

 

It seems you backed up your files using Microsoft's backup program. I am not sure what you backed up but what you want to do is create a system image using the links I provided in the other thread in case your system becomes corrupt or unbootable.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/

Make sure you also create a System Recovery Disk

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5409/create-a-system-repair-disc-in-windows-7/

 

And here I thought VISTA was overly-complex, and problematic.

I don't know, I suppose not, since I don't know what that ("...use the wizard to set up the backup program"?) means (??).

I opened "Backup & Restore" from the Control Panel. From there pretty much just followed the prompts.

It seems I've succeeded, no?

I did not go to the webpage that you linked me to here...that appears to call for a "SilverLight" download, which from my understanding is not necessary, and potentially troublesome/problematic (at least that's what I had read here at MG's some time ago...?).

 

Well thank you, but I am getting extremely confused now.

Very simply, I went to Control Panel>Backup & Restore, and followed the prompts. It went to an external Hard Drive that I connected via USB cable.

So, I should go back to your previous post here, and do more? Someone here (I think "Laura"?) was saying to backup to ext. HD, and also back-up drivers to a disk (I have blank disks - CD & DVD, I believe), but I will have to purchase a player/burner or something to do anything with disks, as this Laptop/Notebook has no disk-drive...

 

Hi grc123,

I have a 160GB SATA laptop HD that I placed into a HD enclosure that has a SATA to USB board in it and it will not be recognized by Windows 7 either. My other external drives (Seagate 320's) are perfectly fine with Win7. Maybe this is your problem also. The 160 GB HD is recognized by WinXP though.

 

Hi Puppywunder58,

No, I'm not having any problem now (that I am aware of??).

This laptop recognized my ext. HD, so I backed-up 20+GB of files (backed-up "everything" on this new machine - to the best of my knowledge/understanding).

All is well...I THINK?!?!?