MyBook

[boofhead]

I have a backup drive My Book Essential. I backed up my data some months ago and want to do it again but the software is not letting me. The drive is partitioned into three, with one marked Backup of 15gb and the other OS of 711gb. The backup partition is too small for my files, and I cannot increase the size. The OS partition has what looks like the original backup data on it, but has plenty of free space.
I selected the larger partition (OS) to backup and the files did not save. Nothing transferred. All I got was a yellow warning triangle. I could not even manually transfer files to this partition. Various messages stopped me such as "cannot read from the source file or disk".
I tried shrinking the larger partition using compmgmt.msc, since the backup would work to the Backup partition, but although it said I could reduce it a little it did not actually do so and crashed my Windows program (Vista).
Has anyone used this backup program who could help me to make it work as it should?
Would formatting it work? Maybe make it one partition (if I can!)? Would the backup software then work?
It is a terrabyte drive and does have my backup information on it from the previous initial backup, all I am trying to do is make a more recent backup and am frustrated.

[boofhead]

Maybe more info would elicit a reply.
I have noticed the same problem when using an external hard drive console. Some HDDs work OK but some do not. I don't know if it is because of what is on the drives or the size of them, but generally the smaller drives work and the bigger ones do not. What happens is that Windows Explorer stops responding, a lot of programs stop working, some screens go grey (or they seem to have an overlay of grey) and Word does not work when the drives are plugged into the USB port. Those programs that do work do so very slowly.
As soon as I pull the USB everything works again.
This is stopping me from doing any backups, which is annoying since I have almost lost the original drives in a recent RAID incident and want to be prepared for when it finally goes mammaries skyward.

[green granite]

Are these drives powered by an external PSU or are you relying on the USB port to power them? If the latter then it may be that the power drain is too much.

[jimtherev]

Further to GG's point, it may be the USB drive which overloaded the PSU and caused the RAID to seem to fail. (Am I right in remembering that a new PSU solved the problem?

I write as one who lost two hard drives which got scrambled when SWMBO's Tomtom overloaded my own PSU and fried the 5v line. Got expensive, that did :ouch:.

[boofhead]

No the drives have their own power. The PSU failed as a result of the mains power going off in a snow storm.

[NaKalloy]

if I remember correctly, the small "backup" partition holds a backup of the drives system software and should be left well alone - its for recovering the drive if it goes wrong, and holds the software images for the setup utilities.
You should be trying to use the rest of the drive. You say you have TWO other partitions? Then presumably your device has TWO internal hard drives which can be used either as a RAID or as individual devices? If you can't write to them, I'd hazard a guess that the internal RAID has broken and needs to be recreated. That varies from model to model, but usually theres some kind of raid selection switch or button on the device, following which you have to reformat
Have you still got the instructions for it?