transfering data from one external hd to another but won't open in pc

I think I'm running the bootstrap version.

When I click on properties in the mint4win application in the flash drive, it's size is 2.46mb.

I installed the ntfs-config but when I try to run it, it says I don't have administrative privileges.

How do I change this?

I notice when I right click on the mint4win app on my flash drive, it gives me an option under the compatibility tab to "Run this program as an administrator...so I checked the box.

Will this make a difference...is Linux like windows in that when you make changes to the system, you have to restart for the changes to take effect?

I clicked on the "Install Linux Mint" desktop icon from the Linux OS, but having problems installing.

When I get to the installation type menu, when I click install now, it gives me a message saying:

No root file system is defined.
Please correct this from the partitioning menu.

I am trying to install it on a separate 20 gb partition that I had set up previously for backup.

I have tried all different settings in the installation type menu, but get the message everytime.

What am I doing wrong...should I install this from my Windows 7 OS instead?

I stopped the installation and restarted the pc and upon startup, it says it's finishing the installation.

It looks like it's installed on the partition that I set up for backup, but the external drive is still not being recognized.

But now, when I go to disk management, it no longer gets hung up and the external drive shows up at the bottom of the menu but not at the top and it's labeled as "unallocated space" unknown device.

When I clicked on it, it asked me to initialize which I reluctantly did, but it could not complete the task...good thing, since then I've read that initializing basically formats the drive.

Just checked to make sure the data was on there on my friend's mac and it showed up...phew, thank god.

Tried testdisk diagnostic and after locating the external hd, clicked on "analyse."

It says "reading error" for every sector...ran for about an hour and completed just 2% so I stopped the testdisk.

Downloaded Patition Wizard, and the external hd doesn't show up in partition wizard, but does in the media recovery tool.

Ran a scan and stopped after 30 minutes as I was running testdisk at the same time and didn't want to stress the laptop too much.

Man, I'm so tired of messing with this thing.

I think I'm just going to format the new external hd I got on a mac and copy everything over on my friend's mac book laptop.

Will transferring 1.3 tb of data from one external hd to another on a mac laptop, damage the mac since it will take so long?

I fried this pc laptop by doing that before, but my laptop was on it's last leg with a "disk failure" message that popped up every time I started the pc.

I managed to squeeze few more months out of it by partitioning around the bad sectors and the pc worked fine til the data transfer...it completed the entire data transfer over night, but the laptop would not start up again...I had to get a new motherboard from HP and also got a new faster bigger inner hd.