I just purchased a My Passport Essential SE ultra portable external hard drive (750GB) this morning. I’m using Windows 7.
I’ve had nothing BUT trouble with it since I got it. I do NOT like the Smartware. And, no, I don’t know how to use it otherwise. I’ve tried uninstalling it and it will not let me. It hung and my computer froze, so I had to restart, so now it’s telling me that it can’t be deleted!!
I had backed up my stuff to it already and it only, partially, backed up. It shows that some photos were not backed up, but there is no option to find out which ONES were not backed up. I clicked on the info button and read the directions for that specific situation and there is NO yellow triangle anywhere to be found. And there is no View Files link anywhere to be found, like it said.
Also, it was telling me to update. Well… it won’t update. I’ve tried 10 times now. Nothing. I’ve disabled my Norton I’ve deleted AVG (because I couldn’t disable it) and it STILL won’t update!
NOW… when I plug in the drive and click on the Smartware, it shows my laptop but nothing else. The Backup and Retrieve buttons are blacked out. There is no option to click on those. I also don’t have an option to click on Drive Settings.
And now it doesn’t look like my music is backed up. It’s not showing as full as it was before. I don’t like that you can’t LOOK at what you’ve transferred over to the drive and delete certain files if you choose. All you can do is look at a diagram of what’s there. Big deal.
I guess it’s time to run the Quick Formatter and just wipe the thing out. But that doesn’t solve my problem of not being able to remove the Smartware from my system.
Hate WD hard drives. THe software is useless and does not work. I cannot get the “Backup” tab to open!!! Told my partner to now buy anything except WD hard drives.
I don’t know if it was the correct thing or not… but I went with the drag 'n drop option. If you click on My Computer and then click on My Passport (or whatever your external drive is), it opens like anything else would. I deleted files I didn’t want that WD had pre-loaded (especially all of the manuals in a language other than my own) and then put that stuff in its own folder. So it’s there in case I need it for some strange reason or I get the OK to delete it… but I don’t need to access it.
I thought you had to do something to the drive first in order to do the drag 'n drop, but I played around and figured it out myself. I’m assuming it’s going to work more like a thumb drive this way (only on a much larger scale, obviously) But at least this way I can see the files I’ve transferred over to the drive and I can delete or change them at will. (just like my thumb drive. Only now I can save my music!!! Which was really the whole purpose for needing an external drive)
I chickened out on using the Quick Formatter because I wasn’t sure what it was going to do and if I’d mess it up somehow.
So I guess I won’t be taking it back. But I still can’t use the software even if I wanted to. At least I’ll get my stuff saved before my computer bites it. I’m going to have to wipe everything out and start over after everything saves to the drive. Stupid virus!!
Hope this helped you out, LFPsych. I figure something is better than nothing.
I do have a couple questions about what I just did.
If I use the drive as a drag 'n drop, it won’t automatically update if I change a file will it?
Also, what about the encryption/password? Can I still use a password to protect the drive, or is that only if I’ve backed up through the software?
When you use drag and drop the files won’t automatically update. Every so often, you will need to drag the updated files over to the drive. I usually drag and drop my whole Document folder over when I need to do a backup. If you want to use the password protection, you will need to reinstall SmartWare. However, you do not need to set up a backup, and that should prevent it from using any resources.
