Partition query on laptop

sandy2_2

When my old laptop died, all the documents, photos etc were copied onto my new laptop into an E partition (hope this means something to you as I´m completely foxed) anyway I can access the old stuff easily enough but I can´t print any of it or copy it onto a pen drive or CD to keep as a back up. I am using Windows XP. Help solve this problem in simple language please
Thanx
Sandy

Psychofly

What happens if you try and copy it or print it. A partition will make absolutely no difference to what you can do with the files.

Hopefully this will make some sense. Imagine you have a 500GB hard drive. That would be your C: drive and that is one partition, you probably also have a DVD drive which is your drive. What some people do is split the hard drive into more than one partition, for example one partition of 250GB (the C: drive) and a second partition of 250GB. This second partition would also be given a letter to identify it and what usually happens is that it's given the next available letter. In this case you've already got a C: drive and a drive so the next 250GB partition is your E: drive.

Make sense ?

diable

In explorer can you access the E drive and browse and open the documents?

When you insert a USB drive does explorer see it and assign it a drive letter eg F?

What CD/DVD writing software are you using within XP or are you using XP's one?

Answer the above questions and we should be able to help you out as if you can access the files then you should be able to print and copy them easily.

sandy2_2

Thanks for explaining partitions.Pyschofly.
Diable´s questions
In explorer can you access the E drive and browse and open the documents? Yes
When you insert a USB drive does explorer see it and assign it a drive letter eg F? No G . I have had a bit of a play around the last few days and managed to copy some files to the G usb from the partition

CD/DVD is assigned as F

What CD/DVD writing software are you using within XP or are you using XP's one? I was using whatever came with XP, have since installed Roxio and can now copy onto disc, but very, very slowly so would prefer not to use Roxio. Have got an old Nero disc would this be better? I would prefer to use Flash drive for back up, as I can just add to this, where as Roxio seems to want to wipe everything from the disc then re do it all with the extra docs/files etc. But it maybe I´ve not found the correct way to use RW program as I´m not that computer savvy

If there´s a quick, simple way to create back up files I´d love to know.
Also if I back up the E drive files, could I then delete them and use E for something else, or cancel the partition arrangement?

Sandy