I am 72 years old and technologicalIy illiterate. I have a “My Passport Ultra portable storage” device. Some of my backup data is likely corrupt, and I want to start a brand new and fresh backup by erasing all my present data, but I don’t want to delete or lose the WD Smartware software support files, utilities, online help, and user manual files. Is it possible to do this, and if so, how? A simple, step-by-step explanation please. Thank you - it is appreciated.
Once installed, WD SmartWare remains in your computer even if the installation file is erased from your WD Passport until manually uninstalled. In additional, all files are available in the WD Support site.
WD Passport User Manual:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705063.pdf
WD SmartWare download link:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/wdsmartware.asp?id=wdfMyPassport&os=win
WD SmartWare User Manual:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705057.pdf
WD Drive Utilities (For drive management and diagnostics) download link:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=218&sid=171&lang=en
WD Security (For password-protecting your hard drive) download link:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=218&sid=172&lang=en
You haven’t mentioned which operating system you are using on your computer, but I’ll assume it’s Windows.
With your MyPassport connected to your computer, open Windows Explorer and select the MyPassport drive from the list under Computer (or if you have an icon on your desktop for “My Computer”, double-click on that and then select the MyPassport drive icon).
On the drive you should find a folder named “Smartware”, double click on this to open it and it should show another folder inside called “WD SmartWare.swstor”. This is the folder where Smartware stores your backups. Double click again on this to open it.
In that you should find one or more folders named for your computer(s) that you have backed up. Each folder contains the backup data for that particular computer, inside the folder you will find (if you want to go and look) a sub-folder for each drive on the computer, but that is maybe more detail than you need.
If you just want to delete all of the data, right-click on each folder (the ones named for your computer(s) ) in turn and select delete and then click OK. This will delete the backup made for that particular computer from your MyPassport to the computer’s recycle bin.
Depending on how big they are you may need to remove them from there - to do that go back to your Windows desktop - find the recycle bin icon and right click on it then select “empty recycle bin”. Note that this will remove not just the files deleted from the MyPassport but any other files and folders that you have deleted on your computer that may be in there. If that may be a problem, then rather than right-clicking on the recycle bin icon double-click on it to open it, then select the backup data folders that you deleted (they should be at the top or close to it) and then delete them again from the recycle bin by right-clicking and selecting delete.
