Hard disk capacity dropped from 1tb to just 32 gb

Create a new partition, install another instance.

boot to the new instance and set up the administrator password.

You need to repartition that drive. Googl partition magic.

Yes this is easy using `Easy Recovery Professional` once the data is recovered you can re-allocate the partitions.

What are you backing up? IS this the first backup or sequence of backups?

I'm sorry to say that this may be due to a corrupt HDD. WD Hard drives tend to die far too fast (I know too well unfortunately).
If this is under warranty, I would call up WD support service for a free replacement.
If you want to take more invasive steps, I will be happy to help you try and recover your files.

Try running Scan Disk and defrag. Otherwise use a program like SpinRite to do a low level scan of the disk.

Good luck

I would suggest two things.
First, plug in the 1TB drive when it won't cause problems, and go to Disk Management under Administrative Tools (for example right-click the My Computer icon and select Manage, then drill down to Disk Management). Check your 1TB disk's drive letter there, and perhaps change it to some letter further down the alphabet, like "T" for example.
Then run a full check on the drive - right-click the 1TB drive and select Properties, go to Tools tab and run "check for errors", selecting the option to repair system errors.
After that's finished, plug in the 500GB drive and run a full check on it as well, just to make sure.
Now try booting up with both disks plugged in - the problem should be gone.
If it's not, then it may mean, that your BIOS is trying to open this 1TB drive to make an option to boot from it possible, and it has troubles because of it's size; some older BIOSes can't cope with disks of that size. Should this be the case, you can go into BIOS Setup and disable booting from other devices that the primary internal hard disk.
A

sounds like the file allocation tables are corrupt. Try the free recovery program found here: http://www.recuva.com/ and see if it finds your files. If so, copy them off to another location and reformet the external drive.

Is your disk correctly partitioned?

1. Right-click My Computer.
2. Click Manage.
3. Click Disk Management.

Find your newly installed disk and see if there is any unpartitioned space on it. If there is, just create a new partition, or delete the previous one so you can create the partition which will consume full size of the disk.

You don't need to format it. You can also just convert it to NTFS and keep the current data.
There is also no requirement to create more than one partition.

In the command prompt window, type
convert drive_letter: /fs:ntfs


You'll find this in Windows Help. Just search for convert ntfs.