There isn't a lot of documentation that comes in the box with the WD My Book drive. This article will provide you with additional information will hopefully answer some of your questions regarding the My Book drive. The instructions are for Windows users and may be different if you are using a Mac/OS X or using a newer/different version of the software.

Getting Started with the WD MyBook Drive. Plug in the power supply to the wall/powerbar and to the drive. Don't worry if it doesn't turn on right away.

That will happen in the next step. Plug the USB cable between the computer and the drive. If you have a USB 3.0 port (usually blue) on your computer, use that as it will make a huge differences in the speed at which your computer gets backed up. The drive should now turn on. After a few seconds (up to a few minutes), the drive will appear in your 'My Computer'. Look for the new hard drive in My Computer.

It will be called My Book. Double click on it and then on 'WD Apps Setup'. This will start the installation process for the backup software. If you don't see the 'WD Apps Setup', look for a folder called 'WD Apps for Windows', if you are using Windows or 'WD Apps for Mac' if you are using OS X to find the application installer for your operating system. Just follow the prompts to install the software. About the My Book drive (Things they don't tell you up front).

The user manual is on the My Book drive in User Manuals ENG UserManual.pdf. If you set the security password on the drive, you will be prompted for it if you connect the drive to a different computer. If you aren't, open My Computer and look for a CD drive called 'WD Unlocker'.

This is a partition on the My Book drive that contains the software that will allow you to unlock the drive. Open this drive by double clicking on it and then double click 'WD Drive Unlock'. Once the drive is unlocked, it will appear under Hard Drive Devices. If you lose the password, even WD won't be able to help you regain access to the drive.

Keep the password in a safe place. If you've encrypted the drive, it will only work in its enclosure. If it fails, the only way to regain access to the information on the drive might be to replace the circuit board in the enclosure with one of the exact same model.

You may find replacements on eBay. Because the drive is hardware encrypted using this circuit board, only the exact same model will unlock it. You can download The software for free. It allows you to backup your whole computer and restore it, even if restoring it is to a new hard drive. There is also a application. The WD SmartWare is included on the hard drive itself. It allows you to backup your data files which are very important.

However it doesn't backup your whole computer. WD SmartWare backs-up your files in a folder on the My Book drive called ' WD SmartWare.swstor YourComputersName. Before disconnecting your drive, right click on the WD QuickView icon in the system tray (near the clock in the task bar) and select Safely Remove My Book. If you don't do this, you may lose data on the hard drive and it may get damaged. About WD SmartWare Application WD SmartWare can backup your computer on a schedule or ongoing in real-time.

Just remember, if you use it in real-time and you delete or change a file by accident, you won't be able to restore it from your backed-up version because it will be instantaneously updated. On the other hand, if you worked on a file for several hours but only sync up your drive periodically and something happens to your computers drive or the file itself, you won't have a backup to restore from. So what's the solution? Have two of these drives. Connect one drive one day and the other drive the next day. That way you always have a real-time backup and, if you need to restore, you can always go back to the other drive to gain access to yesterday's version. If you want to backup more than 1 computer, keep in mind that you can use this software on up to 4 computers.

Also, BE SURE THAT EACH OF YOUR COMPUTERS has a unique computer name or the backup file locations will conflict between computers and likely end up with inconsistent results or backups that fail completely. After installing the software, you may be offered a free upgrade to WD SmartWare Pro. I notice this only happened on my computer with Windows 7 Professional. If it doesn't get offered to you, you might be using Windows Home edition.

You can choose Continuous Backup or Scheduled backup where you can choose Hourly, Daily, Monthly and specify the day of the week or month and the time you want your backup to start. If you have more than one drive, just repeat the process to add a backup of the second drive. Here is the process:. On the Home tab, select your drive letter and My Book. Click the Backup tab. Check the box next to the drive letter.

Then check any folders or files you specifically don't want to backup. Click Enable Backup. Once you do this, backups will be automatic from that point on. That's it, you're done! If the drive starts giving you trouble, keep in mind that it is under warranty for 2 years from the date of purchase.

Western Digital (WD) also has telephone and email support available. Hi Lisa, thank you for your question. If you only delete a file from the My Book backup drive, the backup software will automatically put it back because it still exists on your computer.

To get rid of a file completely, just delete them from your computer’s hard drive. The next time the backup software notices that the file is gone, it should delete it from the My Book backup drive as well. As for any files and folders on the backup drive, you can just use Windows Explorer to browse, view and restore them. Hi Ice Skater.

Sounds like you purchased a network version of MyBook instead of a USB version. The “phone” plug you are referring to is actually for a network cable. It’s a little wider than your typical phone plug. While this is great for sharing the MyBook with other people on your WiFi network, it is actually a little more complicated to get it setup. If you have a network cable, you will need to plug the device into your router instead of your computer. Don’t try to use a telephone cable instead.

You can end up damaging both your router and your MyBook. Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael. Thank you for your question. Unfortunately I’m not sure there is a way to tell WD SmartWare to do that.

I recently had to do something similar and ended up using to do the comparison and selectively copied just the files that had changed after previewing the list. Just be sure to set it to only compare date and time stamps instead of the full contents of each file before you do the comparison or it will take a very long time. Another tool which may suit you requirement even better is.

Karen actually passed away a few years back but her very useful powertool lives on as one of my favourites for replicating files between two sources. Hope this helps. How do you use the Essentials to back up from one computer win 7 to a laptop Win 8.

I was able to do it, but I can’t remember. The problem was that the Win7 machine at locks on some of the files so they didn’t copy. I was able to figure out how to unlock. So I backed up the win 7 again and went to the laptop to restore to a new folder and the backed up files weren’t there. So then I erased the drive (and now I read I should have installed software to it again) but it is backing up at this moment so I’m praying it will work. Once I figure that part out how do you restore to another machine? I thought I may have to set a back up on the laptop and then do a restore choosing the win7 back up?

I have had a series of WD hardrives, unfortunatley I just learned the hard way that if you have your laptop, your back up drive and your back upo back updrive all in your daypack because you are trying to a backup of your backup and you leave the entire backup in a taxi ummm the backup doesnt work so well So here I am starting again with a new laptop and two new WD harddrives, one full of all the files I have managed to rescue from old hardrives and the backup of my current computer and the other one as the backup of that backup. For some reason though my back up of backup simply does not back up all files.

It says it has, but when I check only 700gig of 1.3T has been backed up and I cant figure out why it’s not working! I have read on WD blogs and this appears to be a common problem but i see nobody posting solutions other than dont use WD msartware pro DO you have any experience or any ideas. If you do lease email me thanks frustratedly dave.

Hi Deb, Thank you for your question. The software that comes with My Book isn’t great. As someone else recently pointed out, it backs-up everything and never removes anything if you delete a file. So if you restore your files from the backup onto your new computer, you will likely end up with copies of files that had been moved or removed. If you don’t mind that, you’ll find your backup files on the MyBook drive under the WD SmartWare.swstor in one or more of the sub-folders. They are not encrypted or compressed. You need just drag and drop onto your new computer.

A better solution that involves a little more work and money would be to purchase an external hard drive enclosure and put the hard drive from your old computer into it. These plug into your new computer through a USB port in a very similar way to your MyBook. Then you will have full access to all of the files from your old computer and be able to use your old hard drive for other things. Hope this helps.

Best regards, Michael. Hi Rob, Thank you for your question. I suspect that your computer is trying to start up from your MyBook drive. To change that, you will need to go into your computer’s BIOS and set it so that it doesn’t boot from your external USB device. Once you’ve made that change, your computer will stop trying to startup from your MyBook hard drive. Unfortunately you will need to do a little research on how to do that exactly for your particular computer as the procedure is different for each computer. Alternatively, there might be something wrong with your MyBook drive.

Use Windows Explorer to do error checking of your drive (also known as check disk). Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael. Hi Ken, You certainly can. In fact you have several options.

They all require that you first install the WD Security tool. If you’ve never installed that before, you will find it on your My Book drive in the WD Apps for Windows folder. The installation file is called WDSecuritySetup. Once installed, start it up. There you will find several options:. Change your password.

Remove security. Unable auto unlock for user: (yourname) This last option might be a good alternative to removing the password completely.

What it does is automatically unlock your password protected drive any time you connected it to your computer. That way, if someone tries to connect your drive to a different computer (ex: if someone steals your drive), your information will still be password protected but it won’t constantly annoy you when you are using it. If you want to use your drive with other computers, you can just install this tool on those computers as well and set them up with the Enable auto unlock for user on that computer as well.

Tip: Just be sure to write the password down somewhere. When you don’t use it for a while, you tend to forget it (like I did once).

If you decide to remove the password completely, you can then uninstall the WD Security tool as it will no longer serve you any purpose. Hope this helps! I purchased WD Smartware Pro for $21 when the version that came with my 3TB MyBook finished its trial period. I had divided MyBook into two partitions and the original Smartware worked fine.

Now, however, Pro writes only to one partition, even though both show up when I designate the target drive. Pro always defaults to the smaller partition no matter how often I change it to the larger partition. Before I reformat and go back to a single partition drive, I thought I’d ask you if you have any ideas on what’s wrong. I’ve spent hours on the WD website and other online sites and have found no suggestions.

Hi Robert, Sorry, I don’t have any experience with the WD Smartware Pro version. I gave up on WD Smartware completely since I moved to Acronis True Image last year.

Anyway, I am just guessing but it might help if you delete your scheduled backups and re-create them. I remember in WD SmartWare that I had to select a destination for the backup. Before you go and re-format your drive, you might want to consider merging the two partitions together to avoid loosing any files.

Take a look at the to find free applications that will allow you to resize your partitions. Use the application’s resize feature to shrink one partition and grow the other. Then move your files from the smaller partition to the large one. You may need to repeat this process a few times until the smaller one is empty at which time you can delete it and maximize the size of the larger partition.

I think some of the newer versions might even include a merge partition feature but I haven’t tried them. Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael While I’ve never lost any data from using any of the recommended applications, there is some risk involved should your computer crash or a power failure occur during the process.

For this reason, please take steps to first backup any files that cannot be easily replaced. Hi Siva, If you setup your backup using the WD Smartware application the first time and still have it installed on the same computer, just plug the drive into your computer’s USB port – at least that is the way it works on Windows. It should start adding any files that are have either been added or changed in the last 3 months to your WD My Book backup drive.

Casually Found My Book For Macbook Pro

Depending on how many files you have on your computer, this may take a while to complete because it still needs to check all the files to see if they’ve changed. However, if you’ve changed your computer since then or are using the Drive Image application software that also is also included or available for free with your drive, you may have to follow a different process. Best regards, Michael. That is very frustrating Larry and exactly why I’ve stopped using SmartWare. I switched to Acronis True Image and my backups are not only faster but more reliable. Western Digital includes a special with MyBook or you can download it.

This will allow you to take a snapshot image of your drive. To do faster incremental/differential backups, you will need to get the full True Image product from Acronis. From time to tim I’ve seen it go on special for as low as $15 at Staples. The rest of the time, your best deal is likely the Acronis special offer.

For non-personal requirements, see which might better suit your needs. (These are NOT affiliate links – I don’t get anything by you clicking them) Best regards, Michael.

The biggest difference is reliability in my opinion. I had to restore my computer about 6 months ago and discovered that the backup created by Smartware was incomplete. I dropped Smartware like a hotcake and switched to Acronis True Image. It can even do real-time backups like Smartware was supposed to do.

The version of Acronis True image available for free from Western Digital has some limitations so you may not find all of the functionality there. I use the full Acronis True Image and it has been producing rock solid backups for me for 6 months.

I had used it on some client sites before that with great results and actually used to use back in the days of Windows XP when they offered a free download promotion. Anyway, it’s up to you. I don’t get anything if you purchase it. I don’t have any affiliations with the company. I just recommend it because I am happy with it. That’s a great question Shannon. The first thing to check is to ensure that you have a USB plug somewhere on your router.

If it doesn’t, this isn’t going to work for you. Once the drive is plugged in, it may just automatically appear on your network or you may need to do some configuration in your router in order to make the My Book drive available as a shared drive on your network. How you do this will vary from one router to another. Some routers have you run an application on your computer while others require that you access the router in a web browser. You will need the login username and password in order to access your router. Check your router’s documentation for more information.

Once that is setup, the next step is to access the drive over the network. On a Windows network, it would be a matter of just going to the network and browsing it or going directly to the device by entering an address like routername shareddrivename. Unfortunately I am not very familiar with Macs and am not sure how you would do this. From what I’ve read, in the Finder, choose Go “Connect to Server”.

There, type in the network address for the router in the address field. Click “Connect”. I don’t have a Mac so I haven’t tried it. Hopefully this means something to you and it works. Hope this helps! Best regards, Michael Milete.

Really simple question that has turned into 3 😉 My hard drive is almost full, so I backed everything up with the smartware software and now want to delete a lot of photos I don’t need everyday. When the automatic backup runs will these files be deleted from My Book since they are not on the computer hard drive anymore?

Or will they be put back on my hard drive? Or will they stay on My Book and still be accessible/movable when I want them? Thanks for your help and for speaking english not “manual speak” 😉. Hi Dog, Great question. If you backup your photos with smartware, my understanding is that they will only stay there as long as they exist on your computer. If you then delete the photos on your computer, I think they will also be removed from the My Book drive as well. What I recommend you do is to move the photos you want to archive onto a new folder you create on your My Book drive.

For example, create a new folder called “Photo Archive” right on your My Book drive and MOVE (not COPY) and add any photos you don’t want to keep on your computer into that folder. Smartware should then notice that the photos are gone and remove them from your regular backups but won’t touch the ones in your Photo Archive folder on your My Book drive. IMPORTANT: The point of a backup is to have your precious information in more than one place in case something bad happens to either your computer or to your My Book drive. By MOVING your photos to your My Book drive, they will still end up being in only one place.

If anything ever happened to your My Book drive, your archived photos would be gone for good. If this would be acceptable to you, then by all means go ahead. I tend to do this myself with files I want to keep but would not be terribly devastated if I lost them as a result of my My Book drive dying.

Please let me know if you have any questions. Best regards, Michael. Hi Patti, In Windows, you should always use the Safely remove hardware and eject media tool located near the clock in the taskbar (bottom left of screen) before disconnecting the My Book drive. While I am no Mac expert (I have about 20 minutes Mac experience in total), my understanding is that the OSX equivalent would be to go into Finder and then click the Eject icon next to the name of the device you want to disconnect – before you disconnect it. Then wait for a message telling you that it is safe to eject or disconnect the device. What does this do?

It tells the operating system to finish writing information currently in memory onto the hard drive before you disconnect it. If you don’t do this, there is a chance that information will be missing. My understanding is that OSX uses something called Journaling. Journaling is a wonderful feature that helps protect the file system against power outages or hardware component failures like pulling the plug out unexpectedly, reducing the need for directory repairs. If something happen to the file system, this could be the reason why you are seeing a listing of old files. To learn more about Journaling in OSX, see.

I am just guessing but I’ve hear that this Journaling system is self reparing most of the time. Leaving your drive connected with the computer on for a while might clear things up automatically. If not, there is a small chance that you might be able to fix your problem by using the OSX Disk Utility to verify and repair the My Book drive. The following page on Apple’s site might be useful if you are not sure how to do this: Additional links that might be helpful If you are having a problem where the MyBook drive keeps connecting and disconnecting. If you can’t unmount/eject/disconnect the My Book drive. I hope you manage to resolve your problem. Best regards, Michael.

Michael, I was using My Book on my Win7/64 computer, and could see the WD Quick View Icon in the systray. I bought a new Win/10 computer, and hooked up the My Book to it.

A week later, I moved it back to the Win/7 computer, and I no longer have the icon. Will the free version of Acronis resolve this problem if I just install it over what’s already on the My Book? If not, how do I delete the MB files? How long does it take for the Acronis to make a full image of the computer? Will the free version do a real-time backup?

Does it back up the operating system and programs in addition to the data files? I appreciate any answers you have time to give me, as I’m concerned that I now have a corrupt MB which wouldn’t do me any good if my computer hard drive ever crashes. Hi Al, The icon might have been automatically hidden by Windows. Just to the left of the systray, there might be a cheveron or a small triangle depending on the version of Windows you are using. Click that and you might find the WD Quick View icon in there. Unless the application crashed or you uninstalled it, it should always be in the systray whether the drive is currently attached to the computer or not. As for the free version of Acronis, both it and the WD Quick View application can happily live together.

Installing it will not replace what’s already installed. Note that there are some important limitations to the Free version of Acronis some of which are highly desirable such as:. Data backup (selected files/folders).

Scheduling backups. Incremental and differential backups You can learn more by comparing the documentation for the vs. By MB files, I gather you mean My Book.

You should be able to just open your My Book drive in Explore under Computer and see all the files there. If you want to completely erase everything, you could just format the hard drive. If you want to just delete your WD backup files, they are usually located in your My Book’s WD SmartWare.swstor folder. If you want to fix your My Book drive without deleting all the files, right click on the drive, select Properties, click the Tools tab and finally the “Check now” button. Be sure to check the Automatically fix file system errors box before clicking the “Start” button to begin the process.

By the way, if you don’t see your My Book drive listed, you may have chosen to encrypt your My Book drive. In that case, look for something that looks like a CD Drive called WD Unlocker. You will need to use this before your My Book drive shows up. How long Acronis will take to make a full image of the computer will depend a lot on how big your hard drive is, how full it is, how fast your computer is and whether your MyBook is connected over USB 2.0 or 3.0. I’ve seen it take anywhere from a 10 minutes to a couple of days.

The free version does not do real-time backup. It will only back up the operating system and programs in addition to the data files if you tell it to. My personal strategy is to make a full image backup of the drive once a month and then have another full backup of my data with incrementals the rest of the month. If you tend to install and uninstall applications, or tweak your Windows configuration more often, your personal strategy may be different. I usually rotate my backups every 2 months so, at any point in time, I can go back about 2 months to restore a file or the whole computer. Hope that answers your questions.

Best regards, Michael. Hi Robert, your WD My Book must have either an RJ-45 network connector on it, in which case you will need a network cable, your switch must have a USB port on it, in which case you will need a USB cable with the right kind of connectors at each end.

Yes, this should allow users to share data files but I can’t say how fast it will be. That will depend on the type of connection, how fast your switch is, how many users you have, what type and how big your files are. Don’t expect the same performance or security as you would get from a dedicated file server. Hi Sam, Glad you found the thread. The reason you are experiencing problems is because Windows actually as a limitation of 160 characters in a file path (folder+filename+slashes). Since the backups are stored in subfolder, the paths end up too long and, as you’ve experienced, some files end up failing to backup.

So what can you do about it? First, change the name of the backup folder from “WD Backup.swstor” to something much shorter like “b”. You might also want to shorten the names of the folders on your computer. If this isn’t enough, you may want to look into finding a different application which puts the files from your backup into a single archive file. Also, the file names you describe sound like system files, not just data files.

The default software settings that comes with the My Book drive doesn’t do a good enough job of backing up files to be able to restore a whole computer. Consider just backing your data. You can always re-install the operating system and your applications. Alternatively, again use a different application to do backups, one that will reliably backup your whole computer and provide you with a way to restore it back into working order.

I personally use Acronis True Image which has been pretty reliable over the past few years. PC Magazine recently reviewed that may be of interest to you. If you are on a tight budget,. I recently purchased a 3TB My Book and began backing up my files (877 gigabytes of data). The back up process has been running and has backed up 776 gigabytes of data but shows (in yellow) 101 gigabytes of “files not backed up”. The WD My Book is still running and has STALLED for the last hour or so at 776 gigabytes backed up and 101 gigabytes not backed up. My question: Is it possible that My Book is analyzing the 101 gigabytes of not backed up files and trying to figure out how to back them up?

Hi Jim, As you noticed, the software that comes with the WD My Book backup drive maintains multiple versions of documents when you edit them so that you can go back to previous versions. If all you want is to replicate (or mirror) the source file structure, checkout Karen’s Replicator. Unlike a simple copy and paste that you might do, Karen’s replicator will only copy files that have been modified and optionally remove files that have been deleted which takes much less time. It’s a rather old piece of software with a somewhat clunky user interface but it still works great, a real credit to the developer. Unfortunately the author/developer passed away a few years ago so don’t expect to see any updates coming out in the future.

The last release in 2010 was version 3.6.9. An alternative to that is the command line too called “rsync” which is available on Linux, OS X and the latest Windows 10. You can also get it on other versions of Windows by installing Cygwin.

There are other implementations of rsync on Windows like Acrosync but I haven’t tried any of them so I can’t personally recommend them. Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael. I am using the My Book to transfer shows from a Dish 722 DVR to a new Dish Hopper 3. There is no power button, and it does not indicate when it is safe to disconnect. I read somewhere to disconnect the power at the source, not from the back of the HD. I am assuming that it should be disconnected instead of running constantly.

Also I first purchased a 3 TB version that was incompatible, and had to return it, and then find another store that carried the 2 TB version. That one works.

Do you have any advice concerning this application? I don’t have any experience in using a My Book drive with a DVR. A hard drive, like the My Book, can run constantly for years. Just remember to dust it with a can of compressed air every now and then so that the dust doesn’t become a heat insulator.

Heat will kill electronics faster than almost anything else. Even through I find the My Book pretty quiet, if the noise is bothering you, you could use an SSD drive instead. They are completely silent because they don’t have any moving parts. Although they are more expensive, they also use a lot less electricity. If the little LED light is bothering you at night, put a piece of black tape over it. The only way to have the drive power down automatically when not in use is if the device to which it is connected, in this case a DVR, supports that feature.

If it is supported by your DVR, you may need to enable the feature somewhere in its menus. Check the manual or contact the manufacturer for more information on this. As for manually disconnecting it, again, this will depend a lot on the device to which it is connected. Unless you are constantly recording shows, DVRs are not disk intensive like a computer. If you only record and playback once in a while, most of the time it will be doing nothing. Devices like that don’t usually buffer data so I would say that it is very likely safe to disconnect it anytime it is not in use much like you would unplug a smartphone from your computer after copying files to/from it.

It is also very likely that the PVR/DVR has the ability to deal with disconnections since it would likely need to deal with unexpected power failures which is basically the same thing as unplugging the device. The only time I would really try to avoid disconnecting your My Book drive is when the LED light on the front is flashing/blinking, even if it is very slight.

Watch it for about 15-20 seconds. When the light is flashing, this means that information is being recorded or written to the drive. The worst time to disconnect a drive is while information is being written to it. This is typically when you start loosing information or even damaging the hard drive. All this said, I am not familiar with your particular devices and I wouldn’t want you to loose any recordings based on my guesses.

I would definitely check the documentation that came with your DVR and/or contact the manufacturer just to get confirmation that it is safe. Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael. Hi ReRyRo, I am grateful to hear that you are finding the tips helpful. Thank you for sharing the tip about the words “lose” and “loosing”. I appreciate it very much. I love being told that I am doing something wrong because it is always an opportunity to learn, grow or teach.

In this particular cases, these the correct spellings were previously brought to my attention however my fingers still have the bad habit of putting in the double oo’s after many years of doing it wrong. As for “its” vs “it’s”, that is also a bad habit and a plain lack of proof reading because I do know better – which is why these articles are still here on Mike’s Articlebin instead of on my website at. I will endeavour to pay more attention and apply the correct spelling of these words and correct existing instance. Thank you again ReRyRo for taking the time to share your tips with me and raising my awareness.

I am grateful for your contribution. Don’t lose faith I can change 🙂 Best regards, Michael.

Got to hate when that happens Jennifer. It’s happened to me when I move a file instead of copying it and then press CTRL-Z to undo the move. If the original location no longer exists, the file seems to end up in oblivion. I’m not exactly clear on what you were doing. If you were copying files from an old computer onto a WD MyBook Backup drive and then copied the files to the new computer, your file should still be available on the old computer as well as the WD My Book backup drive. If you were doing a move instead of copy, it might be a lot harder to recover your file. As long as you stopped and didn’t do anything at all to the My Book backup drive, you might be able to recover the file using a file recovery tool.

However, if you have been using the drive or your old computer since then, there is little chance that you will be able to recover the file. Unfortunately I am not that familiar with a Mac to be able to recommend a file recovery tool but feel free to search for OS X File Recovery Tool in Google. Only install it on your new computer, not the old one.

Wish I had better news for you. Hope you find your missing file and can recover it intact. Hi LarryC, sounds like a bug in the backup software. As you might have read here, I am not a fan of the backup software included with the WD backup drives. Just to be certain, create a file and save it on your desktop.

Then manually copy the file to either your I: or M: drive but not both without using any backup software. If everything is working properly, the file should only end up on one of the two drives, not both. Next, delete the file from that drive and copy the file from your desktop to the other drive. Again, check both drives. The file should only be on one of the two drives. If this is the case, your drives and drive mappings are working properly so the problem is very likely with the backup software.

Using a different backup application should resolve the problem. If one or both of the above mentioned the test failed, your drive mappings are incorrect (more likely) or your computer has some serious driver issues (less likely). Hope this helps. Good luck in resolving your issue LarryC! I have 2, 1T external drives that I use for backing up certain files. The older one about 6yrs.

Old is almost full. They only have pictures and videos on them. I recently bought a 3 T wd external simply to back up both of my other 2 smaller drives. Can I just copy and paste my files onto the new drive. The 2 drives are only plugged in when I make a new video or add new pictures. The videos and picture are in different folders ex. Videos A – E, F – J etc.The other external is kept for my son’s shows as his band performs quite regularly.

Can these files simply be manually copied and pasted to the new back with out installing all the firmware. Thanks for taking the time to help every one out. Hi Diana, thank you for your great question. The answer is it depends on how you backed-up the files.

If you’ve simply been manually copying them (i.e. Drag and drop) or even just saving them directly on to the external drives, you should be able to just copy the files to the new drive. However, if you’ve been using some kind of backup software to automate your backups, it will depend on how it does it. Some backup applications just copy the files to your backup drive while others may compress them or even combine the files into huge files. You can usually tell by just looking at the file names. As long as you are just copying the files and not moving them, I would say it is safe to give it a try since your new drive is empty.

The worst that can happen is that you copy all the files to the new drive and it doesn’t work out. In that case, you need just delete the files you just added to the new drive and you will be back to where you started with the two old drives which still have their files. This is why it is important to COPY files and NOT MOVE them. If you were to move the files to the new drive and something went wrong, you would have no way to go back. One last tip.

When copying the files to the new drive, make sure that files and folders from the two drives don’t end up overwriting each other. For example, if both drives have a folder called videos, the files inside those folders might conflict if they have the same name.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Best regards, Michael. Hi Michael,managed to find your article regarding the WD My Book tips by luck. Anyways I have a My Book Essential with 2 TB.My first question is can I go into my book and just delete old backups to make more room on my drive or would I have to erase all contents to free up space. I am still using windows xpyup I knowloland finally moving to Windows 7 Ultimatewould there be any issues with OS compatibility.Also should I disconnect the backup from computer when not in use or just power it down?

Hi Forrest, Thank you for your great questions. 1) Deleting old backups – It depends on the backup software you are using. In general, you should be fine to delete old backups. However, some backup applications keep track of what backups exist for the purpose of offering restore options and prefer that you delete the old backups from within the application.

You might want to keep an eye out for options in your backup software that automatically delete old backups. Some backup programs will take care of that for you, for example, deleting backups that are more than 3 months old (or whatever interval you specify). 2) When not in use – You can do either disconnect or power down. Regardless of the option you choose, you should always use the Windows “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media tool” before disconnecting or powering down the My Book drive. With that said, you might want to consider leaving it plugged in and connected so that automated backups take place. In my case, I use a laptop which gets moved around a lot so I just disconnect the USB wire. The drive (at least the one I have) automatically powers down if it is not connected to a computer.

Hope this helps. Best regards, Michael. Hi Gord, This discussion is about the WD My Book drive. This is unusual since the drive usually contains things like the bundled backup software. However, because I’ve actually experienced similar frustrations with the My Passport, I will share what has worked for me. There could be a few reasons for this. Is the drive visible in “Control Panel” “Computer Management” “Disk Management”?

If so, then Windows recognizes that the drive is connected. If the drive doesn’t appear to be formatted (says Unallocated), you will need to first format the drive from within Disk Manager as NTFS in order to see it as a single 4 TB drive. If that doesn’t work, try setting it to GPT.

If the drive is formatted and you still can’t see it in Windows Explorer, you will need to manually assign it a drive letter. If you don’t see your My Passport drive in Disk Manager, I’ve seen this happen with that particular drive and Windows 7. There are several reasons why this can happen. One could be that there is insufficient power coming from the USB cable, especially if you have other USB drives connected. In fact, some WD Passports have a special cable with 2 USB connectors on it specifically to address the problem. If that is your case, both must be plugged in for the drive or unplug all other external drives in order to give the My Passport enough power. It can also be a WD SES driver issue.

Although this driver issue can be fixed and will work, I personally don’t think you should have to install a driver in Windows in order to get it to recognize a portable external drive. Because you would need to apply this fix to every computer you want to plug the drive into. This is the reason I stopped buying My Passport drives in favour of Seagate drives which have never needed a driver fix.

They just worked out of the box. Hope something in all this helps. Best regards, Michael.

I believe these drives are not Mac ready out of the box, you should erase and re-partition the drive. In Disk Utility select the drive from the left hand menu, click the Erase Tab, then click the 'Erase.' Once this is done, select the drive at it's volume level and go to the Partiton Tab, select the drop down menu and choose '1 Partition', then choose the 'Options.'

Button and choose the 'GUID Partition Table' option, select 'OK', then click 'Apply' at the bottom right hand sectino of the DiskUtil window. Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it: diskutil list open -ef Copy the selected text to the Clipboard ( command-C). Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways: ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search.

Select it in the results (it should be at the top.) ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens. ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid. Paste into the Terminal window ( command-V).

A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot.

The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that. Ok, so here's the output: /dev/disk0 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUIDpartitionscheme.1.0 TB disk0 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1 2: AppleHFS Macintosh 371.7 GB disk0s2 3: AppleBoot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3 4: Microsoft Basic Data Windows 256.0 GB disk0s4 /dev/disk1 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUIDpartitionscheme.6.0 TB disk1 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1 2: AppleHFS Storage HD 6.0 TB disk1s2 /dev/disk5 #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER 0: GUIDpartitionscheme.999.2 GB disk5 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk5s1 2: AppleHFS Time Machine-Backups 998.8 GB disk5s2. Dear Linc Davis! I have the exact same problem, hopefully you will receive my output, which is below following your commands. I can not see the drobo under Go - Computer and i can only see its contents under Disk Utility - right click on Drobo and Open Drobo. I had my Drobo USB connected to Mountain Lion MBPro, changed to MBPro Retina on Maverics and went to Mac Mini Server with Maverics and after years of absolutely no problems with Drobo - its now gone missing.

I am quite sure it has to do something with permissions, but do not know how to fix it. Please help!! There is 6 years of my digital life on there 😟 total 8 drwxrwxr-x 6 501 20 - 340 Mar 12 12:55 Clients TM Backup drwxr-xrwx@ 29 0 0 hidden 1054 Feb 21 12:35 Drobo com.apple.FinderInfo 32 0: FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA00000059 allow list,search,fileinherit,directoryinherit,onlyinherit 1: 73F247A6-B700-47BD-8924-190C6928D04F allow list,addfile,search,addsubdirectory,deletechild,readattr,writeattr,readextat tr,writeextattr,readsecurity,fileinherit,directoryinherit lrwxr-xr-x 1 0 80 - 1 Mar 10 15:56 Server RAID - / drwxrwxr-x 6 501 20 - 340 Mar 12 12:55 Server TM Backup. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums. Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site.

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