So I just purchased a My Book for Mac and I definitely wanted everything on my computer backed up. However I would also like to just store my music and video files on the device and erase them from my hard drive on my computer. How do I need to go about doing this?
hi,
drag and drop into external drive which file you want. BTW. i think you should keep copy with your fies as well if it’s important for you.
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I have a similar problem. I do not want to use it to back up my computer (I already have another HD set up as time machine), I JUST want to use it to store files, consolidating the 5 other HDs I have onto one. But this smart ware is too smart to do it.
Without my being able to stop it (and certainly not having asked to do it), it started measuring my Mac’s HD. Now it has doubled and then subtracted that from the amount of GB I can use on the external HD. I.e… I have 250GB of data on my Mac, and a brand new 1TB HD. But I am only allowed to use approx. 460GB, because the rest has been earmarked for copying my Mac. Which I don’t want to do!! This is so frustrating. I was so looking forward to my new 1TB HD and this is the biggest load of rubbish ever.
Please put me out of my misery and tell me how I can dumb-down the smart ware to my level? If I try and drag and drop files from my other HDs it says I can’t modify. Help!!
If you really want to enjoy a new 1TB drive…
first I’ll share my last support email from WD after I hassled with two of these “Smartware” drives for days:
“If you are able to take your drive back to the place of purchase we would recommend you do this, otherwise, we have two warranty replacement options available to you, Advance RMA and Standard RMA. Both options are available on our website.”
My solution was to get two Seagate drives which were also cheaper.
Took it out of the box… formatted it for Mac OS… and I have my completely functioning storage drive.
If you wanna’ avoid the frustration do what the “smart” people at WD told me to do… TAKE YOUR DRIVE BACK.
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Good to know it’s not just me. I will follow your suggestion and return it.
easiest solution would probably be to just modify your folder permissions in get info if your saying you can’t move a file from a back up to store. Install the smartware but don’t use it its ■■■■ like a bad really bad version of time machine and is really dumbware. When you plug in it will always pop open just close the window but don’t eject anything. There should be two disk images open for the external hd one for the smartwarere and one for the actual drive. If the drive isn’t there change the add the drive to your time machine preferences if you don’t want it to back up turn time machine back up off in system preferences or usually you just have to open the unlock app in the WDSmartware disk image. If you go into the external drive icon there should be 2 folders one saying backups.backupdb this will be your time machine backups folder. The other folder will be western digital smart back up, on my computer you can throw out the first file if you don’t want any backups from time machine or again change the folders permissions using get info to allow you to read and write and check enclosing items. That should get you the ability to move them outside of the backup. The second folder only uses 100kb if you leave it alone. You can make another folder or just drag and drop items into where those two folders are to store items. Its honestly easy just to forget the smartware and keep time machine off if you already have another drive for that. But yeah you most likely just need to change permissions under get info when you ctrl click the file. This external is almost too easy and since you already have back ups just delete the folder they are in on the 1tb drive and uninstall the software start over and install the drive on your mac when it is not 250 gb. It may be a little slow backing things up but for the simplicity of its use i like it and use it primarily for just storing everything not for backup. Hope that helped I heard Sea Gate ■■■■■ and crashes too often, WD is a good price and gets better reviews on most forums. Probably just a permission thing though hoped that helped some.
All i want is to run my itunes without all my music filling my HD. Can I do that doing what you did? It’d be such a relief to pull that off you have no idea.
jacksterine wrote:
If you really want to enjoy a new 1TB drive…
first I’ll share my last support email from WD after I hassled with two of these “Smartware” drives for days:
“If you are able to take your drive back to the place of purchase we would recommend you do this, otherwise, we have two warranty replacement options available to you, Advance RMA and Standard RMA. Both options are available on our website.”
My solution was to get two Seagate drives which were also cheaper.
Took it out of the box… formatted it for Mac OS… and I have my completely functioning storage drive.
If you wanna’ avoid the frustration do what the “smart” people at WD told me to do… TAKE YOUR DRIVE BACK.
All i want is to run my itunes without all my music filling my HD. Can I do that doing what you did? It’d be such a relief to pull that off you have no idea.
I am having the same issues, very surprised there seems to be so many people having so many problems with these drives especially as i love my existing My Book. Disappointed to have to return mine but thanks for the help.
