How can I backup my WD Passport Essential SE 1tb to another?

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

I have 2x WD Passport Essential SE 1tb. I figured it would prove cheaper to have a backup of this large drive (has more space than my laptop HDD), than to fork our for data recovery. I have looked around in SmartWare but it only allows a backup of C:// drive

Any suggestions would be really appreciated!

Thanks!

2

Hi dude, if Smartware is not allowing you to select the letter of the Passport you want to backup to the other one on the Home tab… The try another software or do it manually!

At least that’s what I would do :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

What are you trying to backup just data or the entire system?

Joe

4

Knock on the door - must be the pissa man! Well the clever thing about the SmartWare is that it back’s up everytime a file is added/amended but no, can’t select the drive letter. Manual option of course, but takes time. YES - will try other software! - any instant backup software recommendation?

5

Hi Joe_S

Data…

6

echops wrote:

Knock on the door - must be the pissa man! Well the clever thing about the SmartWare is that it back’s up everytime a file is added/amended but no, can’t select the drive letter. Manual option of course, but takes time. YES - will try other software! - any instant backup software recommendation?

Actually it does, on the Home tab you can select the drive letter you want to backup (If it can be) underneath the image of your PC…

2 Likes
7

Would some type of Sync program work better? http://www.goodsync.com/  I only used the Smartware once and uninstalled it.

Joe

1 Like
8

Nope, only let’s you select the PC native drives…

9

Passport Essential (SE) user manual, page 11 (16 if you seek the PDF):

 WD SmartWare Home Screen

The WD SmartWare Home screen is available after selecting ** Install WD SmartWare or Retrieve a backup and installing the software. It has four tab-selected screen options:**

                                   

• Home—Provides a Content Gauge with the capacity of each hard drive in or connected to your computer. On the WD SmartWare Home screen, you can modify the primary drive being categorized with the drop-down selection box under the name of your computer. By selecting a different drive, the system will identify the categories of files on that drive.

                                             

if Smartware is not giving you the option to change the source drive under Home (Not Backup), then it is not working well on your computer…

10

echops wrote:

I have 2x WD Passport Essential SE 1tb. I figured it would prove cheaper to have a backup of this large drive (has more space than my laptop HDD), than to fork our for data recovery. I have looked around in SmartWare but it only allows a backup of C:// drive

Any suggestions would be really appreciated!

Thanks!

You won’t be able to use SmartWare to back up another SmartWare drive.  The software won’t catalog the drive.  You will have to either do it manually, or use another backup software.

11

so then technically the SmartWave software manual is lieing to us, as a SmartWave drive is still a drive connected to the computer, and thus should be able to be backed up. that’s false advertising. but… I guess it wouldn’t really make sense to backup andother backup drive by copying and pasting or using conventional software. usually in that case you’d be using drive cloning software.

12

I want to transfer data from my wd to another pv. How?

13

yep the manuel is lieing! I wanted to back up my 1tb to another as a backup, only keeping computer, services, driver files etc on CPU