Reply now received from Graphtec but its not helpful.
Firstly this is what I wrote to them:
Message:
I've been trying to back up my silhouette cameo library in case of my laptop failing. I have 265 designs and 85 patterns in my library. Just one file picked at random on my laptop showed that that particular studio file was 2.25MB in size. I found online a description of how to do this, by locating a file called com.aspexsoftware.Silhouette_Studio.8 (I found the com.aspexsoftware.Silhouette_Studio.8 folder in my Windows 7 laptop at C:\Program Files (x86)\Silhouette Studio\Resources\Resources\SPEC_SS2) and saving that to an external drive. I've done this and then found out that this folder only contains 6.84kb of data! I was expecting a big file. Can you advise on what Im doing wrong please? Thanks Sharon

Their reply is:
Hello Sharon,

Thank you very much for your enquiry and sorry for the delay in replying: Graphtec was exhibiting at the NEC Birmingham until last night… Have you been able to find out what was wrong? Have you recovered all your designs?

Brian, one of our engineers here and the Silhouette Technical Support guru, has developed a piece of software at customers’ requests: the software he developed is on a USB key. It takes a snapshot of your library to back it up and restore it if need be (or copy it onto another PC or laptop).

Unfortunately, as I do not have access to your library, I am unable to see if the back up on your external hard drive has been successful.

I hope you will find this information helpful and please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance"

It didn't really seem like she had read my initial question as I haven't lost my files just trying to back them so that I DONT lose them! Secondly it looks like they are not going to reply with specific instructions coz they want to flog me a their back up and restore key at a cost of a tenner plus p&p.