I have a My Passport essential and I am using WD Smartware to backup the XP machine that has multiple users on it. It seems the only user being backed up is the one the WD Smartware was installed under. Is this by design? or should it be backing up all users as I would expect?
I would think that’s by design… Windows shouldn’t be allowing it access to anything it doesn’t have the correct permissions for.
You could try uninstalling Smartware and installing it using the Administrator account and see if that makes a difference, but I suspect it might still only be willing to backup the files of whichever user actively runs the Smartware instance.
Yep… don’t bother uninstalling and re-installing…
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3644/
The WD SmartWare software excludes user folders and files that are exclusively owned by other users. The following user folder hierarchies are the only allowed user folder hierarchies:
Windows XP
- Current user’s folders and files under: “<boot-drive>:\Documents and Settings<current-user>”
- All Users folders and files under: <boot-drive>:\Documents and Settings\All Users
Windows Vista and Windows 7
- Current user folder and files under: <boot-drive>:\Users<current-user>
- All Users folders and files under: <boot-drive>:\Users\Public
Thanks for the quick response. Valuable information if you didn’t know this.
