My Passport has stopped backing up because it says it is too full. The Passport drive is 6 times as large as the drive it is backing up. Why is it filling up? How do I stop it from filling up? How do I clear space so it can start backing up again?
It depends somewhat on what method/program/app you’re using for the backup.
Most commonly though backup software can keep multiple versions of a given file (so in case of corruption or error an earlier one can be retrieved), and also backup software should never delete files from the backup even if they are removed from the source drive (that being the main difference between backup and sync, so you can always go back and retrieve files which may have been removed in error or maliciously).
How you can recover will depend on how it’s been filled as described above, but in many cases you can just access the drive directly and remove files. However the first place to check is whatever backup software you are using, as that should keep a record log of what it’s backed up and also should offer a route to maintaining its archive.
I’m using WD Backup, I don’t see how to do what you’re saying within that software.
There unfortunately I can’t help (I use WDSmartware to my NAS box).
But the simplest would be to just browse the drive in Windows explorer to see what is filling it up, and maybe prune out any obvious unwanted space hogs.
I don’t think I’ll be buying any more WD drives, if I can help it. I called WD ‘support’ and the guy was no help - didn’t even seem to understand the problem. Then he said he was going to have a higher-level technician call me shortly. That never happened, but I got an email from the first guy saying it was a pleasure to serve me and to let them know if I had any other problems. I emailed back and said wait, you haven’t solvedTHIS problem yet. Then he emailed me back and suggested I call them again so they can solve my problem. Why should I do that? It didn’t work the first time, and the promised phone call from higher level technician never came. Infuriating!
Could you please help me? I have My Passport WD, Windows 10, laptop and my system does not recognize the external drive. I have read the post for this issue and my problem is similar; however, in my case the external drive behaves more erratically because using the SmartWare I have seen the files but now I empty. I wrote in this reply because I did not find the direct post.
