8TB My Book How to transfer files to new computer?

I have a 8TB My Book How do I transfer the files to my new computer? It seems to be encrypted. Do I need a Recovery program? If so which one do you recommend? I have my business info that I need to access.
Thanks,
Sherry

I think you need to provide more information.

  1. This is a USB-connected drive?
  2. Was the drive set up as an encrypted drive on the old computer?
  3. Did you just copy or save data on the drive, or was it the destination for a backup program?
  4. Are the old and new computers the same kind? (Mac vs. Windows)
  5. Do you still have access to the old computer?

It is a USB connected Drive, it was used as a backup for my computer that the Motherboard died on. The old computer was an HP and the new one Lenovo both are Windows 10. I thought the My Book would be a copy of my hard drive or look similar to it. I have my hard drive in a docking station connected to a HP laptop and copying files to a USB flash drive right now and then copying to my new computer from the flash drive.

“Backup” as in using a backup software package (e.g., Acronis, Macrium, etc.)? If so, you will have to use that backup software to do a restore to your new computer. But if the backups are system image copies, and the old and new computers are too different (e.g., MBR vs. GPT drives, EUFI vs CSM BIOS), you may not be able to easily do the recovery.

I am using WD My Book as my Backup external hard drive to copy important files to. I used the software that came with the device. I tried hooking the my book to the new computer but it doesn’t look anything like documents that I had on my old computer. Does WD My Book come with a recovery software? It seems the recovery software that you can buy on the web can decipher and transfer the files and pictures I just wanted to know if WD had a recovery software for their device before I purchased from another source. It seems that HP laptop can’t read the My Book either since the old computer was an HP as well.

I hope somebody that knows more joins is soon because everything I say from now on is pure conjecture. I’ve never used the backup software that came on WD devices. (In fact, I deleted it.)

I assume the backup software you were using was WD Smartware but I’ve heard that WD also provides an old (and dumbed down) version of Acronis True Image.

Hopefully this software is still somewhere on your My Book. If so, it will be an installation file that loads the software onto Windows. If not, you can download Smartware from the WD web page. (I’m not sure how you can get the OEM version of Acronis True Image so let’s assume you were using Smartware.) Install it and start it executing. It will ask you a lot of configuration questions that are appropriate for doing more backups. Hopefully it won’t do anything to the existing backup files. Once you are done configuring it, it should present you with some kind of menu. Something on that menu should allow you to access your old backed up files.

Here is some information on the WD My Book drives, they are either encrypted or not and there is no way to turn that on and off. There is an option to enable the password, but the only difference is that you will be prompted for a password in order to mount the volume.

This KBA will hopefully shed some light on this:

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1837

If the password is enabled, the data volume will not mount at all (e.g. no drive letter in File Explorer); you will need to use WD Securities or WD Utilities to unlock the My Book.

If this is the case, download the either utility to unlock the drive (if locked). You may also want to run the tests in the utility.

Based on the scenario, here is what you should see if the following software was used to backup your data:

WD SmartWare

Data will be accessible in the same way if copied/pasted. There will a folder at the root of the My Book called “WD SmartWare.swstor”, there will be a folder with the name of the PC, Volume.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, then the data will be seen just as it was on the source directory structure. You can copy/paste the data as needed.

Ex: x:\WD SmartWare.swstor\Volume.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\ {your directory structure}

WD Backup

Data will be accessible in the same way if copied/pasted. There will a folder at the root of the My Book called “WD Backup.swstor” there will be a folder with the name of the user account, a folder with a long string of characters, then the data will be seen just as it was on the source directory structure. You

Ex: x:\WD Backup.swstor{username}\ {your directory structure}

WD Acronis – Clone or Back up:

The volume will look just like the cloned drive, or there will be a .tib file that you will need to use WD Acronis to restore.

Other:

You will likely need to use that software to read/access/restore the data.

It would be helpful to see a screenshot of what you see when the My Book is connected to really help further.