I used my WD Passport as a backup for my Toshiba Satellite laptop. I used the software that came with it and just followed the prompts to make my backup in March 2012. I’ve done dozens of backups since then. Long story short, my Toshiba crashed and I now have a new Macbook Pro. When I try to retrieve my photos from my Passport, I can’t find any files newer than the initial backup in March 2012. I’m not sure what to do from here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hello, once you start the first backup using Smartware, it should continue saving new files as long as the external hard drive is connected to the PC. You can follow the link below for the steps to recover your backup, or you can manually explore the external hard drive and look for the smartware.swstor folder, inside this folder you will see all of your files.
Smartware Manual (Page 48)
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705057.pdf#page=51
Thank you for your reply. My file structure is not as I expected it to be when I look at the files on my Passport. All files reside in a folder called SUSANS PC (my old pc name) and they are all zipped. There are no folders like pictures, documents, etc. I have had to go through each file and unzip and physically look for photo extensions. And these contain only the photos from my initial backup and none from before. So I guess I my question is how do I utilized the software to enable me to find what I’m looking for? Because I’m not finding it this way. And like I said, I’m going from a Windows pc to a Macbook.
Thank you
Smartware will save the files just as they are on your computer without using any type of compression and using the same folder structure, it is possible that you might have used another backup program to backup your files. You should still be able to explore all of the folders in the external hard drive to find your files.
