I am using a My Passport Essential 298GB - being the neophyte I am about these techy things (you see I am a quilter not a techy) I now see I have saved absolutely everything that has ever passed through or been saved on my computer ever since I bought this external drive and I have very little storage space left - I think maybe 12GB. My question is can I totally erase my WD external drive - essentially start from scratch again - and then instruct it to only save certain files/folders. I’ve been reading the online manual however it is not really layman (woman) friendly and I’m a little confused so some simple instruction would be greatly appreciated.
THANK YOU for your response HDKnows, however, before I do the selective back up I still need to know whether or not I have to totally erase my WD external drive so I am starting from scratch i.e. my WD external drive will have absolutely nothing saved to it and it will be as if new out of the box?
Hello again HDKnows … just want to say *THANK YOU VERY MUCH* for all your time and patience walking me through the process of reformatting and selective backup on my WD.
May I ask one more question? … how do I know I was able to save the files I wanted to save - the screen just tells me I’ve backed up 22.3 GB but it doesn’t tell me what it is.
HDKnows … After much searching on both my computer and Internet Explorer I finally found the file you are referring to … you didn’t tell me to go to my *start* menu then click on *computer* then right click on the *external drive* and voila! - thats where I found my backed up material … I guess you didn’t realize just how much of a *neophyte* I am at this … LoL!!! … anyway, all is good now and I’ve got the material backed up I wanted to back up.
HDKnows … Have run into a secondary problem … As I was working on my computer tonight I kept getting. *high usage* message from Norton so I shut down and went to look at WD … When the window opened on the “home” page a RED X flashed beside the pic of My Passport. Thinking this was not good I decided to go through the reformatting and backup process again, following the instructions you gave me … Except this time it wouldn’t let me choose the part about the partition and the BLUE bar so I chose “simple volume” and the BLUE bar turned BLACK and I continued on from there . I also noticed on the Backup screen that all sorts of other files were listed, not the ones I had originally selected. I’ve now re-selected the files I want to save and the backup is working right now. I also notice that as the Backup is running that on the right hand side do the screen I am getting a yellow “error” sign with the word “FILES NOT BACKED UP” under it and then the indication of 1 file with varying file sizes and a place to click on to check the files but when you click on it nothing comes up in the window that opens entitled “files not backed up”.
It is possible that WD Smartware cannot backup certain file because it is in use. Please make sure this file is not being used by another program on your computer
