I tried this before but had troubles and don't think anything posted. Had trouble getting logged back on so sorry if this seems old news. Wife got laptop a few years ago. Toshiba Satellite 5105-S901 running XP Home. I had Sony W95 desktop and accumulated "stuff" running 2 businesses for many years. Backup habits terrible but I was happy.
Brother transferred desktop stuff to laptop with some magic fairy dust but warned not everything would work under XP so time to house clean. Got a WD USB external hard drive (80gb) larger than HD on laptop (60gb). If I try to copy lap top HD to external (highlight, copy, paste) I get an error after a while that a file is in use. Guessing this is a windows file 'cause nothing else is open.
Maybe I have to "format" the external because I tried a backup that took hours and I can't ID any file structure--just a big backup file. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I want to "see" what I have the external drive and pick a file if I want to transfer it back to the internal HD. Tnks, Thor :?: