My laptop computer died but I was not worried since I had backed up to my WD Passport using smartware recently. I hooked the replacement laptop up to the Passport via USB and installed smartware on the new PC. I upgraded smartware to the latest rev. and started to attempt recovery. Smartware found a couple of volumes backed up from the old PC, but will not restore the files. I can see that all the data is on the Passport, but Samrtware only recognizes about 760 MB out of 56 GB that is on the passport. Most of my files could not be restored.
I looked at the Passport using Windows explorer and found the WD SmartWare.swstor directory–GOOD News–all the old files are still there! I can open some of them such as short MS word documents and even copy them to the replacement PC using windows drag and drop, but most of the files do not open.
I have noticed that files such as .pdf and .xls files also have another file with the same exact name but with the following extensions “wdc.metadata.xml” These files did not exist on the old laptop. The .xml files seem to be used by smartware to encrypt and decrypt the files.
So the good news is that all of my old data is still on the Passport. Since I know the exact size of some old files–59 MB for example–I do not think any data has been lost. The issue is getting it back.
FWIW. I have learned belatedly that Smartware is not really intended for backup. Smartware works great if you accidently delete or alter a file and need to restore an earlier version of the file to the same computer, but recovering from a complete crash was not it’s purpose or so I am told. Any help would be much appreciated.
