I have one backup disk (my blue disk) which is always plugged into my computer. However, I am concerned that thieves could take this backup disk. So I have bought a second my passport disk (my red disk) and plan to swap these occasionally, keeping one disk in a separate location in my house.
. Can I just unplug my blue disk, and plug in my red disk, or will this cause problems?
. When I plugin my red disk after say a month of using the blue disk, will my computing system see that the red disk needs lots of updating and handle the transition.
. Is the history of what is backed up kept on my laptop or on the disk?
I am using a WD my passport 4 TB backup for my files, using windows 10, the WD software: WD security, WD drive utilities and WD backup.
The history of changes is on the backup drive in a folder called History, not the computer!
Not positive, but I do think you can use the two drives, but I think you may have to copy the current Red drive to the previous Blue drive before you change over. I don’t think the replacing Blue drive will find all the changes made during the gap time. It will find the current status of the computer, but nothing else. You would lose any files that have been deleted from the computer.
For your proposal, perhaps you can do some simple change overs, say after a day or two and gradually increase the gap and see what happens.
But I think a complete copy would work. Even there I think a month gap would be kind of long. A week or two would seem better. I guess it will depend on how active you use the computer.
For your information the backup data is in a folder called WD Backup.swstor. There are then a few empty folders until you find one with History and Volume. The History contains the changes, while Volume contains to most recent copies of your files. Sometimes you may find more than one folder with History and Volume folders. Any files deleted from the computer are stored in the History folder.
You would want to copy the WD Backup.swstor folder to the the replacing drive.
If you do make this work, please let us know. Many people lose there precious pictures because the external drive fails and they cannot recover them.
It is good to know that the backup data is in a folder called WD Backup.swstor on the backup disk, not on my computer. On this basis, I might just try just unplugging my blue disk and plugin in my red one and then reversing this in a while.
If I have to do disk copying, it will not get around to it - too hard. I hear your warnings.
If it does go wrong would I just reformat one of my disks and go back to just using one disk?
