Hello. I just bought the WD My Passport 4TB Portable Hard Drive, model number WDBYFT0040BOR-WESN. I plugged it into a USB 3.0 port, got it set up, seems to work. But it’s the quantities that don’t make sense and it affects my use of this product. Let’s see if I can explain this. I am going to be detailed here because any tech support folks reading this would like that. I hope to ask you what happened to me as compared to these following statements from the User Manual:
When you click Start Backup after creating a backup plan, the WD Backup software copies all of the specified backup source files and folders to the specified backup target. Then, on the schedule you specified, the WD Backup software automatically backs up any:
- New File that was created in or copied to a backup-protected device or folder
- Existing backup-protected file that was changed.
My source drive was C:, a 2TB hard drive where clicking This PC indicated this for it: 923GB free of 1.79TB. (I figure the grand total of 1.79 instead of 2TB subtracted for 210GB of overhead and preloaded files in the drive itself. 210 GB seems like a lot for a 2TB drive but what do I know.). Mathematically, then, my C: drive has a quantity of 867GB of both data that WD will backup and data that WD will not backup. Let me call that 867GB my C: drive’s “payload”.
My destination (target) drive is the WD Passport 4TB where clicking This PC before any backup was performed indicated this for it: 3.63 TB free of 3.63 TB. Right out of the box. (I figure the grand total of 3.63 instead of 4TB subtracted for 370GB of overhead and preloaded files in the brand new drive itself).
Queston #1: Why is a whopping 370 GB unavailable on my new 4TB hard drive right out of the box?
Last night, I created the first and only Backup plan, for one day a week at 7PM. This would be 4 days from now. Then, I “manually” initiated the very first backup at 06:40pm hoping to get the bulk of the C: drive backed up prior to that automatic backup 4 days from now. After a bit of time, 15-20 minutes, the WD Backup dashboard said “Copying 0% of 446.48 GB”. Ok fine, it had begun.
Note 1: WD Backup saw only 446.48 GB of my payload of 867GB as copyable. That means it sees 420.52GB as not copyable. That is a huge amount to not copy but I could suppose that amount would include programs and a number of other excluded things as specified in the Users Manual. Ok, fine, I guess.
Question #2: Could that make sense that a whopping 420.52 GB was not copyable? That’s almost half of my C drive. I am not a gamer. I collect photos and make MS word docs. This question may be impossible to answer without looking at the contents of my drive. But can you venture an opinion? What percentage of copyable data is normal for your source drive, in terms of what WD Backup sees?
I let the backup run overnight and the next morning I saw my desktop monitor was inexplicably displaying the Win10 login screen. Uh oh, did that abort the backup? I entered my desktop password and saw my desktop tiles (some unrelated open folders, files, etc.) were all still there from the night before, except for the WD dashboard which was missing, (and now a small window for One Note was open. I never use One Note so I clicked it off. Don’t know how that happened). I re-opened the WD Backup dashboard and saw only 182 GB copied to WD drive. 182 GB out of 446.48 GB equals 40.7% copied. I had a WD Notification saying Some files failed to backup 12/20/2018 3:25:34 AM View. I clicked View and was taken not to a list of what was not backed up but was taken back to the WD Backup dashboard where it said:
Last Backup: 12/19/2018 06:57:41 PM
Missed Backup: 12/20/2018 3:25:41 AM
Nowhere can I find in WD User Manual where to pull up an Activity Log that spells out what happened, a nice feature of my Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive.
Question #3: Does anyone know if WD Backup provides a detailed log of its start and stop times and if/why a backup was aborted? Seagate does this, and it’s nice.
That Last Backup time of 06:57:41 PM corresponds to my initiating time of 06:40pm plus the aforementioned 15-20 minutes of delay, although I am guessing here and they should accurately label if it represents a start time or what. No explanation in the User Manual for what “Missed Backup” means, but apparently this was when the backup ceased. The elapsed time to copy the 182GB was 8 hours 45 min. Wow, that’s a long time but then again this was copying an entire C: Drive. (I could not determine why my computer warm-booted itself in the middle of the night; Windows Update had not downloaded anything such that a reboot would occur. And, my WD drive remained plugged into its 3.0 port the whole time.) To copy the remainder of the payload, I manually initiated a second backup, believing the User Manual when it said that files that were not updated since the last update would not be again backed up. Did I read that right? Keep reading…
The second backup started by again showing “Copying 0% of 446.48 GB” and I hoped it was not trying to tell me that it is going to backup the whole dang C: drive again, in apparent defiance of what the User Manual said.
Seven hours and 50 minutes later (Wow, long time), I received a second WD Notification saying Backup complete 12/20/2018 7:16:23 PM. I clicked on This PC and the WD drive now says “2.96 TB free of 3.63 TB” which means I have used 670 GB total on the WD drive, covering the first and second backups.
Well, I instead expected my WD drive at this point to have approx 446 GB copied from my C: drive and no more than that, as that’s the amount that the WD Backup dashboard had always indicated was copyable.
Question #4: So, why does my WD drive now have 670GB copied over, and not 446GB?
If the first manually-initiated backup copied only 181 GB before it ceased, and if if if the second manually-initiated backup separately copied all over again the full 446.48 GB that was deemed copyable, defying the User Manual by ignoring the first 181 GB, then that would total 627.48 GB, not 670 GB. Even if this is what happened in spite of the math not agreeing (627 is not 670), it seems to disagree with the User Manual which stated only files that were updated since the last update would be backed up.
Perhaps it’s an obscure truth that all manually-initiated backups will always back-up the entire source drive and only automatic backups will backup only the changed files, but if true this should be made clear(er).
Whew, anybody want to tackle this and comment? WD Tech Support, are you reading here?
Thank you.
