Diagnosis of backup problem

[arnnad]

I have an HP external hard drive with defective software, complicated by no HP support. When I tell Win 7 to backup onto the hard drive it will go to 12% backup and no more. I thought I could bypass the hard drive software by this approach. How do I distinguish between a hard drive failure vs. a Win 7 program defect?

Thanks for your help

 

[marsmimar]

Hello arnnad and welcome to Seven Forums.

Safely remove the external hard drive using the icon in the system tray. If there are damaged or corrupt system files you could try running a system file checker scan from an elevated command prompt (option two.) If problems are found, run the scan 3 times and reboot the computer after each scan.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

If no problems are found you should get a prompt that there were no integrity violations. I would then try to test the external hard drive. If the drive has any important data on it you should save it, just in case. This free utility can scan the external drive for errors.

HDDScan

 

[arnnad]

Ran scannow with no errors. I also ran the Win 7 scan on the ex. hard drive, which took hours, and no apparent issues. The HDD scan looks a bit too complicated and I'm fearful of getting over my head.

I've reinstalled the HP SureStore application and I believe I've updated everything to run on Win7 64 but the weird behavior doesn't change. The yellow light on the device flickers endlessly, I cannot detect what it's doing and when I try the backup function it goes to 12% and not beyond.

Aside from using it as a doorstop, any other ideas?

Thanks