Passport Essential

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

I had a Passport Essential 500gb backuping my desktop computer. And then I had a hard drive failure on the desktop. When plugging in the Passport to my laptop, I can not see the files from my desktop. I don’t even see the WD Smartware screen, telling me how many files were on the Passport.

Is there something about a Passport being registered to a specific computer? How do I get to my files that I assumed were backed up? The last time I checked I had something like 80gb of data stored on the Passport.

2

What OS are you using on the 2 computers? Did you backup manually or use software like the Smartware?

Joe

3

Both are XP SP3. I had used both, Smartware and then backup software.

4

Sometimes with Smartware you have to do another backup to find the old one. Look through this post  http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/data-restore/m-p/161586/highlight/true#M5703 maybe it will help explain.

Joe

5

The problem with that is I don’t see the Smartware software anymore either. I’ve read conflicting user messages that reinstalling Smartware destroys the existing data; is that true?