Pretty basic question. I purchased an Ultra some months ago. Backups occurring as expected. Verified that I could restore selected files. Ok. Last week, laptop’s drive started failing. replaced the drive with a slightly bigger SATA drive. Ok. Installed the latest version of WD Backup on the reinstalled Windows 7 laptop. Ok. BUT here’s my question: why isn’t the backup set from the earlier plan showing up on the WD Backup’s Restore UI? When using Windows Explorer to examine the contents of the Ultra, I see 2 folders under “WD Backup.swstor\Steve” - one from today & one from the last time (may 19) the backup ran against my previous (original) laptop’s hard drive. How do get the software to restore from that May 19 backup?
This has to be simple - this use case is so basic - the Ultra drive is providing insurance against a physical failure of the source drive, I now want my insurance to come through for me. What’s the point of backing up a drive if I can’t restore it to the replacement drive?
MTIA for any assistance/feedback.
I have exactly this same issue. My hard drive failed and I can not get WD Backup to recognise my previous “backup”. From the searches for fixes, it seems this is a common issue for many years that WD has not fixed. Are you kidding? The whole idea of having backup software is to mitigate for instances like this. This product is not fit for purpose. I was reliant on WD backup to manage my backups and it fails that simple task. My advice to anyone is to avoid this product completely. Do not use, its a scam.
Hi ScottyCat, Nothing from WD, they don’t seem to care. I was furious when I found I could not restore my system using WD backup after a hard drive failure. All the backup data files appear to be there on the backup drive but the keys to be able to actually perform the restore function are not saved so the restore function does not work. It is sort of possible to do a retore by simply copying the file structure from the backup drive to the new drive (located in the data folder), but it is not the correct way to do it. But I don’t know what the integrity of the file structure and data files are using this method (i.e. are all the latest files included). WD should state the limitations of the software, i.e. not able to restore to a new drive after the old drive fails. The software is only useful to restore deleted files back to the same good drive.
