[Whitelight]

OK just bought a new PC, my old one is showing its age.. Anyway the system specs are as follows

HP Pavilion
P7-1209
i3 2120 CPU 3.30 GHz
8 GB ram
Running windows 7 home premium

installed the software on the Toshiba 3TB external harddrive (did not work for backup).
Tried backup software installed on the PC Still no go.
Tried HP system support, not much help.
Got angry and formatted it, thinking it would work, still no go, oh and lost the software installed on the external drive after format. 

The problem is when I tred to backup, it fails with an IO device error, code OxO8078002A.
Can`t seem to get it to work.
I know formating it was a hasty responce but, I lost my temper. 
Is the problem with the new PC or the external drive.
Any comments are welcome, and yes I feel like a dum***

(edit) Never mind fixed the problem.. The external drive was in NTFS format, I changed it to FAT and BINGO backup works now. 

[Klaustrophobia]

that's not a good fix.  the only things that should be running FAT are flash drives (and maybe not even those anymore, i don't know if the larger sizes still use FAT or NTFS).  sometimes a special driver is needed to be able to use hard drives larger than 2 TB.  check around on HP's website and see if you find anything like that.  you shouldn't NEED the software that came with the drive just to be able to use it, but you can always just download it from their website if you've deleted what came with it.  run whatever diagnostics they provide, maybe you got a lemon.  seems to be happening all the more often with consumer hard drives these days.

[newman]

Also, a drive format always results in data bein erased on the drive in question. You got an error, got angry, did a format, noticed you lost data, then posted about it. That is the wrong way to troubleshoot - googling your problem often results with finding message boards that have people with the same problen, often containing advice on fixing it. Next time when you run into a problem, my advice is to take a deep breath and research your issue before you act. It will save you headaches in the long run.

[Klaustrophobia]

eaaaaaaaasssy on the lecture there.  he couldn't have lost any data if it never worked now could he?  all he lost was the pre-loaded software, which is almost never actually needed, and available for download from the website anyway.  formatting would have been my first fix too.  for that matter, i have pretty much always formatted new drives before using them, errors or not.

[newman]

It wasn't intended as a "rub his nose in it" kind of thing, so you may want to take your own advice and ease up on lectures yourself. He seemed surprised / annoyed that he lost all data on the drive after format, so I thought I'd tell him that always comes with a format. Seems like useful kind of info to me, if you don't already know it, yes? Also, telling someone to take a deep breath, slow down, and research issues before taking action isn't me giving a lecture to boost my ego, it's general advice on how to troubleshoot future issues without making them into even bigger ones in the process. Doing guesswork fix attempts without any kind of research into what they'll do is almost always a bad idea (unless you're very lucky).

In this case he only lost the software that came bundled with the drive, which is almost always complete junk anyway so he's better off without it. In fact, I'd advise doing your backup manually (just copy stuff over to another drive manually) without using backup software. Unless you're, like, Microsoft or some other mega-corporation with zettabytes of data you need backed up, you can really do without backup software. It just takes organizing stuff into a folder structure you'll be able to make sense of later.

[Nuke]

nuke the entire site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
  -nukes philosophy to fixing your computer/civilization

this kinda thing sounds like a driver glitch. even if something automagically works when you plug it in, install the driver that came with it anyway (or an updated version from the device manufacturer). that would have been an easy fix, but nuclear holocaust. now your only option is fiddling around with undelete software which you will never catch me using because i back my stuff up and dont fire the nukes without a reason (not to be taken literally, when the nukes are real the opposite is true).