External drive, revisited

[Eireann]

So I bought a 6 TB external drive, bought Stellar Data Recovery software, and started moving data from the old drive to the new. Which took a LOT longer than I had anticipated.

And one day, the power went out. So much for moving the data. (This software needs to scan the original drive before moving the data, and a scan takes DAYS.)

I decided that I would create an image of the data to make things, I hope, easier. The image is being created now. What I want to know is, how memory-heavy is this process? Can I, for example, work on my photos in Photoshop while the image is being created?

[csquared]

It is primarily I/O heavey. Files and apps might be a little slow to open. Otherwise, you probably won't notice it.

[Eireann]

I can't open File Explorer, and I can't open files from anywhere other than the desktop. What is causing this?

[RealUnimportant]

It's possible the recovery software's stopping it to prevent interference with its recovery work, but that seems unlikely. There's also no good reason the desktop would provide an exception. It's hard to say more without seeing what's happening (or not), could be all kinds of things.