I must have gotten careless and got malware on my Mac (OS X 10.12.4, so) I had to reinstall Sierra. Because of this, everything was wiped, including Time Machine. I did a full backup a couple of days ago to My Passport. But how do I restore the backup from the My Passport drive if I no longer have the WD software on my Mac?
UPDATE: I reinstalled WD Smartware, but the “Retrieve” tab is not active.
UPDATE2: The files on My Passport are locked and say I don’t have permission to see the contents. I assume that is because I had to reinstall my OS and therefore I appear to be a different user? Is there some way I can get permission back?
You should be able to navigate through the backup on the Passport to see your files. If necessary, you could copy and paste them back onto your Mac.
The My Passport drive is password protected, so when I use it I have to provide a password. My Mac froze for an unknown reason and would not reboot. Per instructions from Apple support, I was forced to reinstall the operating system. My sense is that My Passport now thinks I am a difference user who does not have permissions because of this. As you can se from the attached picture, most of the files are inaccessible. Also, when I reinstalled the operating system, external software like WD had to be reinstalled, so when I reinstalled it it had a different username and password than the previous system where my external drive was originally set up.
When I copy & paste files to my desktop, status doesn’t change.
Nancy Hassett
berrymom@sherbtel.net
Home 763-263-8840
Mobile 612-916-8962
You should still be able to access your drive. You’ll need to contact support for this.
Please disregard. I learned that I just needed to access My Passport via Apple Time Machine. I did that, and all’s well. Thank you.
[deleted for privacy]
Excellent.
