Thanks, Richard. I tried that, still no cigar..... I moved my files off the
hard drive, deleted the FAT32 partition, created a new NTFS partition and
formatted it. CHKDSK reports no problem. Still, Backup fails immediately:
"The backup target drive F:\ failed with the following error: The backup
location could not be found or is not valid." I've removed my McAfee
firewall and anti-virus and rebooted, to no avail.

Any other ideas?

--Nevet

"Richard Urban" wrote:

> You are having a problem because the drive is formatted as fat32. Remember,
> I said to format as NTFS. Fat32 has a file size limitation of 4 gig - max. A
> full system backup is going to exceed this, and will therefore fail.
>
> If you format as NTFS you will have no such limitations.
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
>
>
> "Nevet" <Nevet@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:9DBFD9FC-A3FB-4903-BFBE-D9F0DAA63DB8@microsoft.com...
> > Thanks, Richard. I ran chkdsk /f and it reported no problems on the
> > (FAT32)
> > drive. In fact, the drive seems fine for all applications except for
> > Windows
> > Backup.
> >
> > Can anybody recommend a third-party backup & restore application that
> > works
> > with Vista? Or any other ideas as to why Windows Backup doesn't like my
> > external drive?
> >
> > --Nevet
> >
> > "Richard Urban" wrote:
> >
> >> If you do not have too much information already on your external drive I
> >> would copy it elsewhere. Then I would delete the drives partition and
> >> create
> >> a new partition on the external hard drive. I would create this as a NTFS
> >> partition which has more security and built in recovery than a fat32
> >> partition.
> >>
> >> Then, before I tried to store anything on the drive I would run an error
> >> check on the drive.
> >>
> >> From an elevated command prompt type chkdsk XXX: /f (where XXX is the
> >> drive
> >> letter of your external drive).
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Richard Urban
> >> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> >> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> "Nevet" <Nevet@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:BD62387D-D621-4F48-A75E-14575609ACD7@microsoft.com...
> >> > Greetings Vista gurus,
> >> >
> >> > I just bought a new Western Digital "Passport" external (USB) portable
> >> > hard
> >> > drive. The drive is working fine, I can see it in Windows Explorer and
> >> > manually copy files to & from it. But when I try to use Windows Backup
> >> > (from
> >> > Vista's Backup & Restore Center), I immediately get an error message
> >> > that
> >> > the
> >> > backup target drive failed: "The backup disk has a corrupted file
> >> > system.
> >> > Fix it using the disk error checking tool, or choose a different backup
> >> > location." Western Digital tech support says that their hard drive is
> >> > obviously okay, since I can read from and write to it, and they do not
> >> > support Windows software.
> >> >
> >> > Two questions....
> >> >
> >> > (1) Why would Backup claim a corrupted file system when Vista can see,
> >> > read,
> >> > and write to the same file system with other applications?
> >> >
> >> > (2) What is "the disk error checking tool," where do I find it, and
> >> > would
> >> > that help me?
> >> >
> >> > Thanks much for any pointers or suggestions!
> >> >
> >> > --Nevet
> >>
> >>
>
>