External Hard Drive help

[MeadsMan]

Hi,I currently use two seagate external Hard Drives to back up my photos,most of the time they seem linked,i.e if I add or remove files from one,they are automatically added or removed from the second drive.However I have experienced a bit of an oddity,if I connect the second drive to my laptop,not all the files are showing,also I just opened the second drive in Canons D.P.P software,and again not all files are showing.Howerver all files show on both drives when I open the drives on my desktop computer ? Can anyone advise me what is going on,and how I can cure this Hard Drive naughtyness ?

[diggleken]

Originally Posted by MeadsMan

Hi,I currently use two seagate external Hard Drives to back up my photos,most of the time they seem linked,i.e if I add or remove files from one,they are automatically added or removed from the second drive.However I have experienced a bit of an oddity,if I connect the second drive to my laptop,not all the files are showing,also I just opened the second drive in Canons D.P.P software,and again not all files are showing.Howerver all files show on both drives when I open the drives on my desktop computer ? Can anyone advise me what is going on,and how I can cure this Hard Drive naughtyness ?

I am NO expert, but could it be that your backups are just to your desktop C drive and are just 'relaying' to the external drives, like Canon or whatever software will populate picasa when that is opened?
If so, you need to back up/save direct to the external drives, whatever they are showing as in 'my computer'.
What I mean is that you need to backup/save to the correct destination, ie the external drives.
Just a guess, could be wildly out.
Wait for an expert.
Cheers
Ken

[Meta menardi]

It sounds to me that they may be set up as part of a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks) system. This is intended to increase the security of your data, and can work in a number of different ways. It relies on a number (usually two) of disks holding parts of the data or copies of the data, so if one crashes, the data should still be there. I would normally expect the disk to be non-removable, and the set up to ensure that this is so. I would suggest you put your disk back where it was, and invest the £50 squids or so in another disk you can copy data to, and move it around. Did someone set this system up for you? If they did, talk to them. Whatever, back up your data from the place that has a complete record, then sit down and think about what is going on. I don't mean this as a flip comment, careful thinking and reasoning solves many computer problems.