Help Please! How to use Iomega Desktop Hard Drive.

CathWales

I bought an Iomega 1TB HDD 3 weeks ago and have only just unpacked it. I have it plugged into the power and laptop and a message said it was getting software. It is showing it as plugged in to the E drive, but the icon is showing a 'Safely Remove Hardware' option and clicking on it it brings up a box giving me the option to remove USB Hard Storage Device. What is this? Will it remove the Iomega from my drive or something? There is a message in the box saying to select the device you want to unplug/eject, click Stop. Windows will notify you when it is safe to unplug. Is this part of the set up? I thought it was just drag and drop device and don't want to damage HDD before i've used it!

Toxteth_OGrady

That's normal when you plug in an external disk via USB. It's supposed to stop you losing data by just disconnecting the USB cable whilst data might still be being written to the disk. If you are leaving your drive plugged in the whole time you can ignore it.

CathWales

What do I do next tho? Do I open My Computer and try dragging a pic there? I don't want to use Send To yet as I want things still on my laptop hard drive just incase lol! To stop using the session do I then follow the Stop procedure I mentioned? Thanks for your reply.

closed

copy and paste.

It is a very good idea to copy rather than move important data, so many people lose the lot when their usb hd fails. a third backup of photo's etc on dvd is also a good idea, as is a full disk image backup

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

CathWales

closed wrote: »

copy and paste.

It is a very good idea to copy rather than move important data, so many people lose the lot when their usb hd fails. a third backup of photo's etc on dvd is also a good idea, as is a full disk image backup

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Yeah, this is what I am worried about. I know nothing lasts forever and i've debated for a while on getting an ext hd, but this seemed a good deal at a good price. I opened My Computer, chose a pic and copied/paste but it is not in there!

EDIT: Tried a second time and after Vista asked for admin permission it copied 1 pic.....now to try the rest lol!

eamon

If you are intending to use the drive as a backup repository then do this. Vista makes it an easy process

Control Panel\System and Maintenance\Backup and Restore Center

Follow the instructions. I can do it thus it must be easy.

CathWales

eamon wrote: »

If you are intending to use the drive as a backup repository then do this. Vista makes it an easy process

Control Panel\System and Maintenance\Backup and Restore Center

Follow the instructions. I can do it thus it must be easy.

Thanks. I've never tried this before and am giving it a go now. It seems a lot easier than copy and paste...I think lol!!

CathWales

Its finished back up and at first I could only see the files that were first on the E drive before the suggested back up. I have found a folder named Back Up Set created today with 30 files but nothing in them. I just need to find where my music and some video files are now!

EDIT: Have decided to delete unamamed files and start again copying music and vid files!

CathWales

@eamon. It is saying that as it is a first back up it will back up my whole system, but I only want selected items, such as pics and music, I deleted the files it copied using the back up and restore windows option and it said the back up faile (was this cos I deleted the files, I have not tried a second back up as I don't want to go into lots of zipped files to find the one file that I wanted to copy as before). Automatic back up is on. Is it better to switch it off for this one time?

CathWales

I have come to the conclusion that it may be better to manually move files to the ext hd as I have done the auto back up eamon suggested and it is not working out for me lol. It is just copying numbered files that sometimes either contain files I don't want to copy or zipped files that are empty lol. Its probably me doing something wrong!

closed

If your pc hard disk died or you got a nasty virus, how would you get it all working again? - disk imaging (ie backing up the lot) lets you do that in a matter of minutes, without going through the whole process of finding OS CD's (if you have them), program installers, drivers, and then restoring data