Windows 7 How know what's on my external harddrive?

[4hal]

I have a Delta Studio XPS desktop with Windows 7 operating system. Recently I purchased a Seagate Free Agent - Desk, external hard drive and hooked it up. I want to back up my files. It seems to be working. It's listed as Free Agent Drive J on my computer menu, has 465GB capacity and 124GB used up, but I have been unable to get a list of files on that J drive. What it does list when I try to access it is stuff I don't understand: "C". "History", and "uuid." I click on each and still don't find files listed. Any suggestions on how I can see what's on this drive in English will be appreciated.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Open Windows Explorer and you should see the drive displayed just like your internal hard drive.


To check the drives functionality Try this: right click on the drive and select new, select Folder and make a folder named My Files or anything else you want.

Then pick a couple of files from you hard drive and copy them to the folder.

See if they are visible and can be accessed normally.

If everything is working normally you should be all set.

I don't know where the uuid and history folder came from but you can leave them for now just to be on the safe side.

If you have not yet put anything important on it you could format it and start clean.

Mike

 

[patcooke]

The Seagate Free Agent comes with pre-loaded backup software which I think is probably what you can see. There is a guide to the drive software here:

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[Joe S]

My first external HD was a Maxtor. I forget what the software with it was but it didn't take long to uninstall it. I hope it's better than the Smartware crap WD puts on their drives.
Joe

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Personally I would use Windows 7 built in back up instead of the software supplied by the disk manufacturer.
I have used it and it seems to work fine.

I also use Norton Ghost as well just to be sure.

 

[Joe S]

I've got more than one external and use manual backups and imaging with Acronis TI 2010.Between the two I think I think I'm ok. With the Acronis you can use Explorer to look in backup and copy and paste for something simple.
Joe

 

[patcooke]

Yep - Acronis TI every time for me as well - I'd just format the drive myself.

 

[Trouble]

Agreed format as an ntfs volume and Acronis would be my choice of backup as well. Shop around you can often find the software discounted slightly through newegg or amazon and save a couple bucks over what they charge at the acronis store.
Newegg.com - acronis true image home 2011
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Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

 

[patcooke]

I also found a way of getting a better deal on Acronis TI - I went thru the process of buying online from the Acronis site and for some reason, just before completing the purchase, I pressed the browser back key. I then got a popup asking me if I was sure I wanted to go back from the purchase and offering me 10% to proceed!

 

[4hal]

Thanks Joe. I'm going to contact the external hard drive manufacturer and see if they can help out. I'm also going to use Mike's info to get a backup started on my Windows 7 HD.

 

[4hal]

Thanks, Mike. I appreciate our advice and will use it.