Just bought a My Passport Essential – my first external hard drive. I bought it to transfer data from my old PC (Win XP) to my new laptop (Win 7). I read the online users manual which didn’t help me much. My old computer recognized the new WD HD and assigned it a letter – as did the laptop. I downloaded the SmartWare s/w into both computers. I supposedly copied my entire C:\ drive to the new WD HD, but only 8 GB out of 40 GB was copied. I chose the option to transfer all files. Then I tried to figure out how to determine what files were transferred, but I had to wait until I retrieved them in my laptop. Even then, it was hard to tell. It seems that they are all “boilerplate” stuff that came in my old computer. None of my photos, documents, email, or anything else I generated seemed to be included. I’m sure I did something wrong.
I’m suprised that there doesn’t seem to be a display of folders or files that are in the WD Passport, how they are organized, etc – except for the pictures of the major categories and the overall quantity of each in the two HDs. I thought perhaps it would be organized in the same way it was organized in my computer – although not down to the same level of detail. No detail at all… I chose the option to have it placed in one folder because distributing it in the same folders didn’t seem feasible since it was going into a different HD with a different OS. I assumed that I would have to do a lot of dragging and dropping to get everything organized again. (There should be an easier way.)
I’ve wasted a whole day and accomplished nothing. I was going to call WD, but their service office is closed on Tue and Wed. Perhaps someone could get me going in the right direction and eventually on the right track. I had no idea this was going to be this tough. Please keep your recommendations as simple as possible. Thanks.
