I have a WD My Passport Essentials SE drive. Before formatting my C:\ drive and reloading my OS (XP Pro) I backed up all my data to the WD drive using WD Smartware. I am now in the process of retrieving my data using Smartware. I want to retrieve all the files which were backed up and place them in their original locations. When I try to specify the destination for the files as original locations I find that the option is grayed out and I can only specify a single destination folder for the retrieved files. How can I make the original location option available so that I can select it?
You won’t be able to retrieve to the original location since that changed the minute you formated your C drive.
Please retrieve to one folder and then put on desire location.
or, you can navigate down through the swstor folder on the drive, and manually copy and paste the data out of the drive. but Wizer’s solution might be faster/easier.
Just to clarify Wizer’s answer…
When you formatted the drive and re-installed Windoze, even if you use the same User Name, Windows sees it as a different user… Windows is telling Smartware that that new BonnieWDUser isn’t the same BonnieWDUser who owned the original files.
Even after doing Wizer or Wayne’s restores, Windows may, in all liklihood, tell the new BonnieWDUser that she doesn’t have permission to access the restored files. This isn’t critical, though, because you can right-click the restored files/folders in Explorer and give the new BonnieWDUser access to the files with the “Permissions” tab.
This isn’t specific to Smartware… even if you just copy/paste the files to a spare hard drive and then re-install the O/S, you generally lack “permission” to access your own files.
