Using a Windows Backup software with 1TB My Book Essential on W2k3 Server

This is a 1TB drive.

After installing the software and the drive, I updated both the firmware and the WD SmartWare as suggested in the docs.

WD SmartWare does not appear to support scheduled backups of arbitrary folders, so I have opted to set up the standard Windows Backup utility to back up a folder on a specific partition of our server.  However, after leaving it running through several scheduled backup times, there does not  appear  to be anything resembling a backup stored on the My Book Essential drive.

Then I remembered noticing that whenever I opened WD SmartWare, it always says the drive was locked and must be unlocked, which involves clicking an icon in the program. It seemed to require this every time I started the software, not staying unlocked between invocations. 

How do I unlock the drive and keep it permanently unlocked, since this appears to be why Windows Backup hasn’t been able to write anything onto it?

Hi dmmiller2K,

there may be a couple of things going on here so lets digress

Do you have a password applied to the drive?

If yes, you should be able to access the Drive setup and then security and remove the password protection.

Then uninstall the SmartWare software from your system and reboot

then go to WD’s website and download the VCD manager (same place you downloaded the firmware and software updates) and run the VCD manager to hide the VCD

keep in mind that although it should work server  is not a supported OS but it is USB and the drive should work without issue.

Let me know if you have more questions.