I decided to upgrade my laptop to windows 7 from windows vista and needed to wipe my hard drive of all my personal files like pictures, videos, documents, etc. Before I did the upgrade, I bought a 500GB My Passport External Drive and used the Smartware software to backup all my files. After doing that…I assumed all my files had been backed up to that drive. After that, I installed the new windows 7 and ran the Smartware software to retrieve all my old files. Problem was…most of my pix and videos were missing! I am outraged to find out that missing pix of things like funerals of family and lots of memories have been lost! I thought there might be at least an explanation as to why those files are missing and were not backed up with Smartware’s backup software. I’ve looked everywhere on that hard drive and don’t see the pix/videos I’m missing. Anyone have any advice on how to solve this problem so it either doesn’t happen again or maybe how to find those files?
Its going to be hard to locate the files since you reformatted you computer we cant verify if you were backing up the files correctly. But for future reference verify in the backup tab under detailed view that pictures is checked. For futher information watch this video.
HI there, go to your drive and you’ll see a folder called Smartware.swstor, it should have your files in a layout very similar to that of your computer (Computer name> Drive letter> Users> Your Name> your files). What you don’t see in there means that it was not copied.
Smartware is rather basic, I use Windows Backup with my WD drives when I need to copy data as it makes a full image. If it has not been that long since you formatted your computer then you may be able to recover your files with a recovery software, you can start with TestDisk as it is free.
ThePizzaMatrix wrote:
HI there, go to your drive and you’ll see a folder called Smartware.swstor, it should have your files in a layout very similar to that of your computer (Computer name> Drive letter> Users> Your Name> your files). What you don’t see in there means that it was not copied.
Thank you for your help! All the files I thought were missing or not copied are in that folder on the drive. When I did the automatic file restore with Smartware, it just didn’t copy everything back. I was frettin’ for a long time about this one. So, again…thank you!
