Hi. I just purchased a WD My Book Essential 3TB and updated firmware + software before trying to back up specific folders on my machine.
First impression, the interface looked good and was simple to use. However, I didn’t even have time to get up from my chair after starting the backup before I noticed that 14 files failed to back up. Only a few seconds in and already I’m missing 14 files? I opened the file list and saw that all these files had one thing in common : they’re large files (~1GB+)
My first thought was… doesn’t FAT32 have size limitations? Maybe this thing needs to be formated NTFS.
I then came to these forums and saw that a lot of other people have the same problem. So it’s likely a software issue. A lot of people are abandoning ship and turning toward 3rd party software.
What’s the official word on this? Does anyone have an official statement from WD on the subject?
UPDATE: Oddly enough, I just tried it again after using DRIVE ERASE and starting over… and this time it seems to work.
Could DRIVE ERASE be equivalent to a reformat? And could a reformat have fixed the problem? I’ll keep running more tests to see if this is just a fluke.
Hi, I think that drive erase will only delete the hard drive, but not format it.
I just gave up on the software, and re-organized my drives so that whatever I want backed up is all on the same drives. Now, I just delete what’s on the My Book and re-copy those drives to the My Book every time I want to back up.
This way, I know that all the files are being copied AND that the files that have been deleted since the last backup won’t continue to exist on the backup device.
This was my first time using backup software instead of doing it manually, and those “failed to back up” files gave me too much of a scare to try it again anytime soon.
The drive itself is great, though, so far. Maybe WD needs to give up on software development and just strike a licensing deal with an existing backup software company.
