Hi, I’m new to this forum, so forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere. I have searched, but not found anything relevant.
I’m going to help install a friend’s My Book Essential from her old PC (an HP Pavilion T3320, Windows XP, SP3) to her new PC (HP all-in-one Windows 8.1). All her old data (photos, documents, emails etc) have already been moved over to her new PC. Her My Book has plenty of unused capacity, she just wants to have a back-up device connected to her new PC.
The question is, “Can I just make all the usual physical connections, then wait whilst the My Book auto-installs or will I have to manually install software, SES drivers etc on the new Windows 8.1 PC?”
WD SES drivers will be installed automatically by Windows as soon as a WD drive will be attached to Windows 7 and higher. You will see this if you click in the “Installing software” icon in the taskbar which appears if you plug in the WD drive. Click on this and see what drivers will be installed by Windows. After all drivers are downloaded and installed, you will get the notice, that the drive is ready to be used.
Depending on what features are being used, you may not even need the SES drivers (although on connection they will automagically be installed by Windows Update). Basic connectivity should be available anyway, the SES drivers are only needed for more advanced features like security encryption and hardware diagnostics.
For example I have a MyPassport which I use occasionally with my work laptop (Windows 7). It tried to install the SES drivers, but always fails as I don’t have admin rights on the machine. But the drive content is fully accessible as I just use it as a basic drive without any encryption etc. (I also use it with a hardware media player and a filehub, neither of which have WD software available for things like on-the-fly decryption).
You will of course have to install any “optional” software like Smartware, as with the original installation. If you no longer have the install media on the drive (as it’s supplied when it is shipped) you can download it from the WD website.
Many thanks to both of you for your advice. You were absolutely right, I connected the drive, it immediately auto-installed itself. I could then see the WD Smartware application on the My Book drive; which I launched & then followed the on-screen instructions.
A couple years ago, I transferred my old data in a similar way. Now on my My Book I have my old laptop’s backup and my new laptop’s backup (plus my wife’s laptop’s backup).
Everything is great except now the 500gb My Book is getting full. I do not need my old laptop’s backup. What is the best way to delete my old laptop’s backup from the My Book?
Should I just use Windows Explorer to delete all the files (i.e. within the WD SmartWare.swstor folder for that backup)? I think maybe there is a better way using the WD Smartware software?
