TheSpotlessPane
New Member
OK, so I've got some old hard drives that I'm wanting to consolidate on a single external drive. Most of these are the hard drives from computers I've had in the past. I'm just curious as to why on Earth this procedure would be complicated.
Here's what I've done. I created a folder called "backup" on my current computer. I created several sub folders that correspond to each drive I am wanting to back up. At first, I just plugged in each hard drive, hand picked files from said drive, and then copied them to the corresponding subfolder in my backup folder.
Later, I decided I'd rather play it safe (searching through several entire hard drives is a nightmare! What if I missed something important?) and decided to just copy the ENTIRE drive to its associated subfolder. I started to do this today, but noticed some serious discrepancies between the amount of info in the destination folder, and the amount of info on the actual hard drive (the source). After copying drive #1, the folder (into which that entire drive was copied) only alleges to contain 10-20 gigs (exact numbers aren't important), while the drive itself shows as only having like 200-300 gigs of free space...out of 400 something total gigs! What happened to all of those other mysterious gigs? Is it permission related? I also noticed two folders were not copied. When you open the hard drive itself from the "my computer" overview, there is a file called "users", and one called "program files" that don't show up in the folder to which I copied the whole drive. Every other folder is there, including "program files (x86)."
Thanks a million to anyone who takes the time to read this, and thanks a million more for any feedback.
ps I DO have sufficient space for a full copy on my computer. So, it doesn't seem like it could be a matter of limited space.
Here's what I've done. I created a folder called "backup" on my current computer. I created several sub folders that correspond to each drive I am wanting to back up. At first, I just plugged in each hard drive, hand picked files from said drive, and then copied them to the corresponding subfolder in my backup folder.
Later, I decided I'd rather play it safe (searching through several entire hard drives is a nightmare! What if I missed something important?) and decided to just copy the ENTIRE drive to its associated subfolder. I started to do this today, but noticed some serious discrepancies between the amount of info in the destination folder, and the amount of info on the actual hard drive (the source). After copying drive #1, the folder (into which that entire drive was copied) only alleges to contain 10-20 gigs (exact numbers aren't important), while the drive itself shows as only having like 200-300 gigs of free space...out of 400 something total gigs! What happened to all of those other mysterious gigs? Is it permission related? I also noticed two folders were not copied. When you open the hard drive itself from the "my computer" overview, there is a file called "users", and one called "program files" that don't show up in the folder to which I copied the whole drive. Every other folder is there, including "program files (x86)."
Thanks a million to anyone who takes the time to read this, and thanks a million more for any feedback.
ps I DO have sufficient space for a full copy on my computer. So, it doesn't seem like it could be a matter of limited space.
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