This is maybe the dumb question of the month but I checked the internet and haven’t found anything this is my first external harddrive and this is all totally new to me, so I’M sorry in advance if this is ridiculous to ask or has been posted before (I already checked) . I recently bought the WD My Book Essential 1.5 TB and did a backup of all my files with wd smartware. Now I decided that I want to use the backup function just for documents and pictures and add music and movie files manually (drag and drop). So now I want to delete all my files in the film and Music folder that are already on the harddrive (that were “backupped” when I first used is). How can I do this??
Since nobody seems to have an answer (or maybe it’s too obvious and nobody bothers) , I just will answer myself and maybe this helps someone with the same question.
The only way I found to delete the files is manually by getting in your wd smart folder directly on your drive, look into the folders with the long numbers and letter combination (where it says “DO NOT MODIFY!” ) and search for every file or folder (eg music or videos) you want to delete.
If this is the only way I am really disappointed because the problem is I I still can see them in the “Retrieve Files” section of WD Smartware although they really are deleted and I get all the space on my drive back. But I just want the to disappear visually as well. How ist this possible??
What you need to do now, is to Pause the backup, right-click on the SmartWare icon, and click on Exit. This stops the SmartWare service.
After the SmartWare service is stopped, you will need to delete the SmartWare folder on the drive in order start over. Before you do any of this, though, you will need to make sure that you have all your data on your system drive (or on another drive), first. This way you don’t lose your data.
Once the folder is deleted, you can recreate the backup using only the categories you want backed up.
Hello, I also have a WD My Book Essential with WD Smartware.
I did ask two things of WD, the 2nd might be useful for other ‘newbies’ viz
1.If I begin to do a back up but then wish to cancel, not just pause, how does one do that?
Where is it backed up to?
The reply came back as follows:
The software needs to be installed to perform a backup, and if you decide to cancel it, you will need to uninstall the WD Smartware software from the control panels, add or remove programs tool.
2.The files are being backed up to the My Book volume in My Computer, under a folder called WD Smartware. Using the WD Smartware software, you will be given the option to backup the C or the D under the home tab.
I don’t really like the idea of having to uninstall and reinstall each time I change my mind on a backup (in this case, it was because my first ext HD was not large enough and so I needed to put it onto the WD TByte. For what it’s worth, I thought i would mention it as above.
I find it interesting that one is able to (successfully) to manipulate the numbered folders. Again, I don’t like the idea of how they are all split up into different folders.
Now I have a question. Using the Retrieving Tab, does one have to manually create a new folder in My Documents called “Retrieved Contents” in which to put the retrieved folders?
There are a few things to note on your questions. All of the answers that you are provided are for the older version of WD SmartWare. The new version of SmartWare has the ability to “Exit SmartWare” when you right-click on the SmartWare icon in the system tray. This will stop the background service of the software so that you don’t have to uninstall the software or reboot the computer after deleting a backup. Typically reinstalling or rebooting the system would make SmartWare prepare for a new backup if you had deleted an existing one. The new version (1.3.0.16) also backs up to a folder called “WD SmartWare.swstor”.
The new version of the SmartWare also removed the multiple numbered folders. It now backs up by computer name and then create a volume folder. In the volume folder you should see pretty close to a “copy and paste” of you files including the preservation of the directory structures.
The default restore location is My Documents/Retrieved Content. This folder will be created automatically when a restore to a retrieved content folder. Also note that this folder is not backed up by the system. This prevent a circular backup from occurring and the software backing up what it just restored. After you restore your data I would recommend that you copy/move it to where you want it on your system. Then delete the Retrieved Content folder when you are done.
All of the features that I mentioned above are part of the new SmartWare version so I would recommend that you update to the latest version so that you can take advantage of it. I included a link below to the update for SmartWare.
) and search for every file or folder (eg music or videos) you want to delete.