ive just bought an 80GB hard drive, i just backed up it took 39 minutes and all its said was downloading desktop to hard drive :(G) now what im worried about is if i need to put that info back in again : IE a virus gets into my computer again, will my outlook express emails and contacts still be there ? will my photo shop still be there with all its photos inside, my documents, my history and bookmarks ?????

you backed up what? everything ? How did you do it? If you backed up everything you should be ok ie.. worst case scenario you format and when you move stuff back it will "updated" ie contacts will be pasted back in etc etc.. but i think you should clarify a bit whats up.