Interrogating Backups and Associated Problems
I have a MacBook Pro which is nearly 10 years old. I used it in connection with my business for a couple of years, but since retiring it has been used more or less exclusively storage of photographs and music, as well as video clips. I have used iMovie to edit these clips and prepare them for viewing. I did rather neglect the Machine for a few years, until with the advent of the pandemic I decided to tidy everything up and finish the video presentations. I managed to start this, but then the computer started to malfunction, with the Apple Beachball showing more often. Obviously, the hard drive is in need of replacement, which in itself is not a problem, but I need to back up the directories on the computer. To put matters into perspective, it takes 12 minutes to boot up the computer from scratch.
When I first had the computer, I bought a WD smartbook to use as a backup facility, but when the computer was out of use, obviously no backups occurred. This week I decided to connect up the WD Smartbook, to see if I could create a back-up. Eventually I got it operational and first I managed to get an assessment of the split of files to be backed up, i.e. photos, music and so on. Then I managed to commence creating a backup or so I thought. I started the process at 8 o’clock in the evening, but it was still going at 1 o’clock next morning and finished I think around 5 o’clock next morning. Out of the 187000 approx. files, 32,000 were not backed up as the drive was full. There was a new section which stated there are additional files of 562 GB (on a drive of 1000GB), so presumably there was no room for the few remaining files. There was a message inviting me to view the files that had not been copied, but when I pressed the command to view, all I got was the beach ball. Bizarrely, all the files I really needed to back up were copied. The result of all this was that I could not work out what had been copied.
I think (and hope) that if I can clear out the “additional files” (see the phone screenshot), I will be able to repeat the backup and this time capture all my files. From recollection, I seem to remember that when I first had the laptop, I used Time Machine and I wondered whether information saved from this is clogging up the Smartbook and that obviously this data is not compatible with WD saved data. I really need to interrogate the Smartbook to see what’s on it, so my question is whether this is possible? I have a more up to date I-Mac, with a WD My Passport, which works really well and has got me out of trouble on numerous occasions and of course it performs continuous backups, ,as the Smartbook should do. I have even considered purchasing a high capacity usb stick or flash drive to save the files on. Do you think this will be feasible?
