Backup's not working

Hello everyone, I've recently had problems with my memory stick so I did a data and document backup to my hard drive. After purchasing a new memory stick I tried to transfer everything from the old stick to the new...no go.
I downloaded the new Portable Apps (including Sunbird 0.9). Everything went well except there are no events in Sunbird, I assumed that the last update from the old drive was bad, however, none of the backup files would restore the events (ten months worth).
I formatted the memory stick and reinstalled the original PA's (Sunbird 0.3), again everything except the events came back as is should and same problem with previous backup's.
Do you think I'm doing something wrong, or that I had a problem with my original Sunbird backing up?
Pentium 4 @ 1.7gig, 1.5gig ram, XP Pro SP3
Thanks for any help.