Hard Drive Gives Hard Time

I am almost done with the first set of edits for Book 3, “Mandrean Revenge” and have just been sent the final edit of “The Sapphire Crucible” to go over one more time before it is released in its second edition.  So I have a lot of work ahead of me.  But what do I find myself working on for the last 3 hours?  The computer!  Specifically I was working on my external hard drive I use to back up my data in case of the unthinkable.  It backs up the data again and again but doesn’t write over the old data.  Instead it writes on the disk again and again until it is full.  Now I have a full external hard drive.  If I had to restore my computer, it would totally fill the memory.  So I read the manual.  All it said was how to hook it up.  Then I went on line and found their help page.  It gave me some numbers to call so I called.  After being transferred around because they only seem interested in computer problems, I finally reached a tech who told me the unit was working fine and the problem was in the settings on my computer.  He gave me a number for the computer manufacturer and I called them.  After being transferred around again the representative for the computer company told me the computer had nothing to do with it and that I should format the hard drive and then just save items manually to it.  That sounded pretty radical so I called back the hard drive manufacturer and told them there was no problem with the computer.  The best they could suggest was to format the drive and reload the software.  Being the sceptic that I am, I checked out the site before doing anything and found all it showed was the same user’s manual I already have and there was no software to download.  So I am here after hours and hours with the same problem I had before.  My only consolation is that I didn’t make the problem worse by erasing everything first.  I’ve thought about diving back in but I’ve had enough for today and I have too much work to do.  On the other hand, I’ve wasted a good part of my day on this and have nothing to show for it.  I have a hard time just walking away from such an epic failure.  These help desks sure don’t help very much.