This might be a dumb question, however, why not just copy the files manually?
This is what I do, and I am a real nut about making backups; a total of five separate backups.

I have already had 3 factory resets of my Windows OS

Make an image of your system weekly [deleting the previous one] and at the very most you would only have to restore a week's worth of data. I use and recommend acronis true image for this task however there are a lot of imaging programs.
Note since you have a seagate drive, you are able to download the proprietary [and free] version of acronis from the seagate support site.

 

This might be a dumb question, however, why not just copy the files manually?
This is what I do, and I am a real nut about making backups; a total of five separate backups.

Make an image of your system weekly [deleting the previous one] and at the very most you would only have to restore a week's worth of data. I use and recommend acronis true image for this task however there are a lot of imaging programs.
Note since you have a seagate drive, you are able to download the proprietary [and free] version of acronis from the seagate support site.

If I make an image of my operating system, that is not going to help me with getting all of my files over to a different device from my EXTERNAL Seagate drive. It's messed up. I am moving things over to a flash drive. It's taking a long time to do it, but I am making appropriate folders so I can find things. I can't find a darn thing on Seagate, so this might take a very long time.

 

OK, a flash drive is not really a great idea for storage and or backup. A flash drive is more for temporary storage, moving files, and similar tasks.
If I understand your post, you are moving files from the external drive. Are you not able to read the drive? If you are able to read the drive, what is the exact problem?

 

OK, a flash drive is not really a great idea for storage and or backup. A flash drive is more for temporary storage, moving files, and similar tasks.
If I understand your post, you are moving files from the external drive. Are you not able to read the drive? If you are able to read the drive, what is the exact problem?

If you looked at my captures that I attached, you will see that my Seagate external drive is messed up. I go to search for something and can't find it, or I do find something, there are 20 dups. What I am doing now is copying EVERYTHING over to a folder on my computer C drive in one folder. After I end the tedius task of deleting dups (or maybe I can just pull over ONE photo or file into my flash drive), I can then reformat the Seageate TB drive and drop in things the way I WANT them to show up as. I am making folders in my flash drive that are very specific, like Family Photos, or my MS Word documents that are named appropriately (like Recipies). After this finishes copying everything over to my C: drive, then I can take an image like you suggested (There is a thing called Windows Backup Tool), and then like you said have it set up for once per week, and delete the previous one. One step at a time. If you need more clarification, please ask, because I don't want to lose any files. I did lose everything before because I got a blue screen and had to do a clean install of my OS., then I had to re-scan all of my precious photos, but I also lost word documents also.

 

I would create a folder on C: Drive e.g Jean, inside that folder I would create all the sub folders
e.g Recipes, Grandma etc, Place everything you want in each folder as they should be.
Then download and use Microsoft Synctoy.
This can be setup to monitor the main folder which means any changes made within that folder or sub folders
e.g Recipes will be made in the Seagate drive or any other drive you want.
I have it setup to copy all changes to more than 1 place.
This can also be setup so when you shutdown it will run the scan and copy the needed files before turning the computer off.

 

OK, first the screenshot is showing that you have 36 GB of data on the Seagate drive (I am assuming it is a "Seagate backups Plus" drive) and you have more than enough space on the C: drive. Instead of moving all that data manually download "Roadkils Unstoppable Copier" here:
https://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P29/Unstoppable Copier

Then create a folder on the C: drive Called (whatever??) maybe "Seagate drive backup". Install the software and open it. Go to "Settings" tab and make the settings look like this screenshot:

Then go to the "Copy " tab and browse and select the source to show your " "D:" drive like this:

Then browse and select your "Target" folder that should look like this:

Once all this is done then press the button saying "Move Files" and walk away for about 2/3/4 hours (maybe more/less), because depending on your USB speed and your HDD RPMs it will take a very long time to move 36 GBs of data. One thing about this software is that it wont hang on corrupted files, it will still copy/move the corrupted data. Trying to move or copy 36 GBs of data manually would take forever. Also on the C: drive after the data is moved, I would run a good duplicate finder software to remove redundant files. I use several different programs so I'm not going to make a recommendation, just find one that you may like. There are many free ones out there.

 

I am fed up with my tech support setting up backups and not working:
Windows Back up (In settings) - does not back up new stuff.
Backup and Restore - that was hanging on for 6 plus hours and never completed, so I killed it. I dsiabled both methods.
I want manual control to drag and drop, but I also need some kind of method to get my entire C drive over to an external drive. I am now copying over every single file from my Seagate drive to a folder to my my Deskop C drive. If I do a reformat of my Segate external drive, will it be very clean and I can use it to bring over things? I still do not know how I would do this manually because I would need to drag and drop stuff over there and get the same mess as before.

 

I also need some kind of method to get my entire C drive over to an external drive.

What you want to do is create an image. I use Macrium Reflect (free) to create an image on a backup drive. In case of a catastrophic malfunction (fun words for a nasty situation!), you can replace your drive and run this software again and build your drive from the image. There are other programs that perform a similar task. Your best bet would be to create their bootable media and boot from that to create the image. To do a restore, you would pretty much have to boot from that media.

 

The windows backup is somewhat useless. As I recall, you can only have one image and no compression of the image.
You have a seagate drive so you are able to download the free version of acronis true image. IMO a much better tool than windows backup.

 

It sounds like what you are wanting is an incremental type of backup where changes made to docs, etc are incorporated into an existing image.
If this is what you want, windows backup is NOT going to accomplish this task.

FWIW I never bother with an incremental type of backup; I just make a new image weekly however that is just the way I do it and does not mean incremental type backups are wrong.

 

You don't copy an entire drive manually!
You boot either a CD or USB stick with cloning/imaging software - before Windows loads. Then you select the drive you want to image and you let the program do the work.
It is important to do the image before Windows loads because if Windows doesn't load, you can still restore the image you want. Each image has the date. I also add the name of the computer so when I look at each external hard drive (7 with different images on them), I know which image goes to which computer.

I make images of four computers about every 2 months. I also do a clean image, no incremental backups. As my husband and I work in the 2 months, every important file gets copied to 2 different external devices like sd cards or USB sticks. That assures us that important files not in the image can still be recovered.

 

crjdriver
I'm not sure sure what an "Image" is. I think of an image as a picture. How would I get access to indidvidual files within thath image? I talked with HP Smart Friend he of course he said "I suggest you do not follow third party software or follow instructions from a techy forum". I think if I do it, they may cancel my subscription. Right now I pulled over a folder that I had previously removed from my Seagate external drive (that was reformated) . One technician told me to never put huge amounts of data on my C drive because it may freeze and crash. Still confused.

 

An image of your drive is a single file that contains everything on the drive/partition/folder [whatever you choose to image] By that I mean that if you choose to make an image of your drive, it will have everything on the drive AND you can use this to recover from a drive failure, virus, whatever. You can set the imaging program to make an image weekly, monthly, whatever. It can be a complete image OR you can make an incremental image where just the files that have changed are put into an existing image.
In addition, when you use a real imaging program rather than windows backup, you can control the level of compression of the image file. As an example, my personal system has approx 40gig of data on the system drive. The image file is around 28gig using moderate file compression. You can choose the amount of compression.

That is a VERY basic explanation of a drive image. There are a few things that an image does not contain; page file, hiberfil.sys and I think a few other files that are created when windows boots.

You need to decide exactly what you want to accomplish then formulate a backup plan to accomplish these tasks. At the very least, you need two copies of whatever you want to save such as pics, docs, etc. ALL drives fail so it is only a question of when your drive will fail. With an image backup, a drive failure is a non-event. You install a new drive then boot with the recovery usb that the imaging program has you make. Restore the image and you are done.

If this sounds like what you want to accomplish, then I would do the following;
1 Decide on what backup program you want to use. As I said, you are able to use the proprietary version of acronis however there are a number of imaging programs available. I use acronis true image however there are others that do the same job
2 Once you decide on what program, download the manual and read it. After a complete reading of the manual, if you have questions, ask

I talked with HP Smart Friend he of course he said "I suggest you do not follow third party software or follow instructions from a techy forum

Well, hp has done such a good job. You have to decide what you want to do.

 

PeterOz
First, This site won't let me quote from you right now.
I like your idea. I started the download for SyncToy 2.1 version, and then I got this message. See photo. I cancelled the installation, but should I say yes to this?

 

Here is what you need to do to enable .NET 2 before you attempt to install it.Note: it says Windows 8 but there are directions for Windows 10.
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-net-framework-2-windows-8/