My Passport 1 TB Backup Issue

I’m really bad at computers. I am trying to backup my school laptop (running out of room because of pictures, documents, presentations, etc). I purchased the external hard drive on Sunday, not thinking it would be that difficult. If someone can help me… that’d be great! 

During the backup, my windows system endpoint software pops up and says there is a threat on the computer (a Java program that I proceed to allow the system to delete the program). Then, my backup gets almost to the end and then says that the backup has failed because it “failed while trying to read from the shadow copy on one of the volumes being backed up.”  I have tried backing up several times, all without success (though, some of my stuff has obviously saved, since half of the drive is filled). 

Blah. Thanks in advance!

Hello,

What backup software are you using?