Why can't everything just work?

I recently purchased an external HD from zipzoomfly.com (great site for your computer hardward needs) for a great price. I figured it was a necesity so I could backup the increasing number of digital photographs and MP3s that are on my system. One crash and all would be lost. I don't mind losing the MP3s, but losing the pictures is something quite different. We typically take pictures with a digital camera, so there aren't many hard copies of these memories sitting around.

The HD that I bought is a Western Digital Dual-Option 250GB drive. It comes with both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections. Transfer via firewire is much faster than the USB connection, but you can also use the USB connection to enable the external USB hub. So I have both connected. I figured this would be an easy task of installing the drive and the software, a few clicks here and there and I would be backing up my files. Oh, how wrong I was.

The software that comes with the HD is a dumbed down version of the Dantz Recover software. When I tried to do an automatic backup session, everything seemed to work fine, until I kicked it off and left it overnight to backup. The next morning my system was in standby mode, and would not 'wake up' properly. The system would startup just fine, the monitor fails to turn on. So a hard reset was needed. After the reset, I looked at the backup logs and it was claiming lack of space on the backup drive. WHAT?!? It's a 250 GB drive and I am backing up a 120 GB drive. You do the math. So I try a manual backup, and when it is querying all of the devices, it freezes on device 3:1. Of course, I haven't gone looking around trying to figure out which device that was as the program is frozen. I can't even kill it through the task manager.

After a few tries and reboots, I have completely given up on the software. I decided to install MS backup (available on your Windows XP disk) and use it. I am able to backup just fine now using this software, but I am still having problems with the system standby and recover. Everything recovers except for the monitor. Bah. I have tried to update my graphics drivers and any other drivers on the system and will see if that helps any, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the new HD. I may just have to turn off the drive unless I am performing a backup.