Need help with data retrieval/transfer from My Passport Essential

I have so little experience with this kind of thing that I don’t even know if I’ll be able to talk about it intelligently. Please bear with me.

Several months ago, I bought a new Dell computer that runs Win8 Pro (which stinks, but we won’t get into that). I transferred to it a backup of all data that had been on the computer I was replacing.

Two months after I bought the Dell computer, the HDD failed. Dell replaced it, but told me I was on my own when it came to recovering the data from the defective one.

Believe me, a lot of data is involved: seven years’ worth from my old computer, plus everything I’d done on the new computer. Much of it is job-related and I really need access to that data.

I ended up having to pay $350.00 to a data recovery service. They told me 99.9% of my data had been recovered. They put it on a 300 GB My Passport Essential external HDD without any indication of what I was supposed to do from that point forward.

I’ve tried to follow the User Manual. But when I get to the “Retrieve” tab, where it says “From the Backed Up Volumes list, select the volume that you want to retrieve from,” everything grinds to a halt.

The drive and its contents are visible via File Explorer but the “Backed Up Volumes” box on the “Retrieve” tab is blank, despite the fact that there are 122GB of data on the drive.

I’ve searched all over the place for info that might help me understand what’s wrong, but I’ve been unable to find anything.

I’m at the point now where I’m knocking my head into the wall. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about this to discern what the problem might be on my own. And I fear that if I proceed on shaky footing I’ll screw everything up. At this point, I sure don’t need anything else getting screwed up. 

Could someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong and/or what I’m not understanding? Please keep in mind, if you would, that I’m a complete noob with this stuff.

I hope I’ve made sense. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me.

You can’t retrieve with Smartware what wasn’t copied by the smartwar program because it uses a specific folder to hold files. Go to the drive itself on the computer section (You should see it with a drive letter, like a thumb drive) and see if you see the folder with your files. If you don’t then you’r down to calling the guys who did the job for you so they can tell you the name of the folder they used.

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Thanks so much for your informative reply. Yes, the drive does have a folder containing my files.

Here comes a dumb question: do I just copy everything onto my computer’s HDD and put it where it belongs?

I had thought of trying that earlier, but it seemed too simple. And as I’ve said, I really don’t know what I’m doing, and I sure don’t want to wreck anything. I always try to err on the side of caution.

Once I know what to do with the files, I think I’ll be all set. Thanks again for your help!

Magovani wrote:

Thanks so much for your informative reply. Yes, the drive does have a folder containing my files.

Here comes a dumb question: do I just copy everything onto my computer’s HDD and put it where it belongs?

I had thought of trying that earlier, but it seemed too simple. And as I’ve said, I really don’t know what I’m doing, and I sure don’t want to wreck anything. I always try to err on the side of caution.

Once I know what to do with the files, I think I’ll be all set. Thanks again for your help!

If you can see the files and navigate them, yes.

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Thanks so much for your help!