Solved Request guidance about copying user files to external hard drive

I am having problems copying user files to a backup external hard drive. I have a Vista32 machine with an external usb hard drive attached. I open two copies of Windows Explorer, and set one to point to the user name directory (underneath that is my documents, my music, etc.) and the other to point to the directory on the external hard drive that I want to copy (backup) the folders to. I go to the user name folder, and drag the user name to the external hard drive folder. It appears to copy over, but then I find that not everything actually did copy, in fact most of it did not. The backup external drive then has the user name but underneath, there is no documents folder. Some things are there but others are not. The scary thing is that it is easy to "think" you made a backup, as there is no error message, the files just are not there. The other weird thing is that I am sure I did this numerous times before on a different, but identical (hardware and OS) machine, and it did copy everything. What am I missing? I am sure I have done this before. Shouldn't this work? Hopefully it is not a stupid question, but even if it is, I need to know the answer.

I use xinorbis.com :: Welcome! to find stuff

and KingCopy to copy folders sorry don't have a download page for that
It gives to ability to pause downloads and set the order you want them done in
I will add it to my website.

Thanks. Looks interesting, I will look into those programs. But I was trying to keep it relatively simple without having to install additional software. Here is why (and what I am doing). I am trying to come up with a reasonable system for re-installing the OS or else re-imaging the OS disk to a known good state. Here WAS my plan (which now has a huge hole in it). 1. Place all data I want to keep in the appropriate user sub-folders (documents, music, pictures, favorites, etc.). 2. Connect external drive for backup and drag the user name over to the external drive to copy all subfolders under the user name. 3. Either do a clean OS install or re-image the disk from a backup image to a known good state. 4. Update Windows and drivers as necessary until machine is in good working order. 5. Connect the external backup drive and move all the data from the user sub-folders back to machine. This process seemed reasonable to me, but unfortunately, for some reason I am unable to do a simple copy and paste at step 2 of the above plan. I thought this would work based on something I read about a clean install in the seven forums. But when I drag the user name over, it creates the user folder and some of the sub-folders, but not others. None of the data in the documents folder was copied. So if I hadn't noticed this, I would have lost all the data when I did a re-install of the OS. Is this normal? Is that not the correct way to copy user data over? I am sure I have done this before and it worked, but it is not working now. I cannot believe I am having trouble with a simple copy and paste. I was able to work around this by going to each individual sub-folder and selecting it and dragging it over to the external backup drive, but it would be much easier to select the main user folder and drag just it instead with all of its sub-folders. I just want to know if I did something wrong, or if it is not a correct thing to do to drag the user name over. I want to update my plan to something that works every time so I don't lose data. Thanks.

Welcome
A good plan for the future is back up the entire hard drive once a week with Macrium (on an external hard drive)
Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download
Also back up your personal stuff, very quickly with Karens Replicator, I use it and love it.
Karen's Replicator
These tools have helped me with the most serious problems. It takes about 15 minutes to use the image that backs up your HD, and about 5 minutes to restore your personal stuff. Trust me these tools could not be easier.

I use a dual approach.

I do image backup as needed, usually weekly, using Acronis True Image.

I also have a program called MirrorFolder installed (not free) that I setup to backup my user/dynamic data to several places. One being a 2nd hard drive in the same computer, the other being a 2nd computer on my network. These are set, via MirrorFolder, to sync every two hours.

Microsoft SyncToy could also do this for free but I like the MirrorFolder interface so have stuck with it for years now.