I can’t access the data on my passport – I’d like to just wipe the drive and recycle it … but don’t want to until I can be sure the data is gone
See attached screen grab
Any idea on how I can get to the data?
In the WD Smartware display under “Backup Source” click the grey (left) object in the small pair below the Monitor. That should give you a dropdown list of the drives on your PC. Select the C: drive. Then in the “Backup Source” screen under “My Passport” select the backup drive. This will tell you how much space on the Passport is used. To see the files, select the Retrieve Tab and then Next. Wait a bit and the next screen will show the folders and any files in them…
To erase the drive, you need the WD Drive Utilities software in Downloads. Click the tab at the top of the WD Community screen.
You may want to use WD Backup instead of WD Smartware, which is no longer supported by WD.
I hope this helps.
Cliff
Hi Cliff …
Happy New Year and thank you for answering
I can see the ‘c’ drive and, under back up source there is a red ‘x’ beside the wd drive (no writable partition)
Both the back up and retrieve tabs are grey’d out and I can’t get into them
Have I missed some step?
But, really, all I want to do is erase the data before recycling the drive. When I open utilities – first – the drive shows 0 bytes (which is odd and I know there is data from the last time I backed up) and … not sure how important … but it talks about unlocking the drive and too many failed password attempts … I was not asked for a password at all.
thank you
Debra
Hi Debra,
The ‘C’ drive you see is not the dropdown list. Please click on the small grey box. That should show the drives on your PC. Then you can select the MY Passport drive for the backup. This will at least show you what you have.
If you still can’t erase the drive, then I can’t help you. You will need to concat WD Support.
Cliff
Hi Cliff … I appreciate the time you’ve spent on this.
Thank you
Debra
