My operating system is Windows Vista Home Premium. I have connected a Verbatim 250 GB external hard drive to store my backups. I am using Norton Premium to manage my backups and set them to be completed daily and it when I look at Norton is tells me it was successful yet I get an alarm from the Backup Status and Configuration that it failed. The message I get is to use the disk error checking tool. But what tool might that be???

Right click "My Computer" > explore > highlight the drive and select properties and choose tool tab > select error checking and press enter.

I would not recommend a USB powered drive for back up a system as they will drag your system down.

I thought I had tried almost everything. This seems to be working. It is in the process of backing up so hopefully it works completely.