I haven’t found many answers elsewhere, so i came here. the manual didn’t really answer anything for me.
So i bought a WD 640 external hard drive (essential edition) as an extra drive just for my studio recordings and short films.
a couple questions:
When i started the backup, a “memeo” program began, but it says to buy it or use trial version…is this program necessary? can’t i just copy and paste files or is it a necessity to update all files simultaneously? do i have to buy this? for the price, shouldn’t it be included?! can i use something else.
does not having 2.0 usb affect me in any way other than speed?
if i back my files and the trial expires, does WD hard drive still function? will it erase all my files?
I have a 640 but when it pops up, it says i only have 595.5 and i haven’t put anything in it, why? the partition? would reformatting fix this and if so, how do i go about doing so.
how do i know if i back all my files into WD, what do i look under?
can i then unplug my WD and take it to a friend’s house and upload my stuff to his comp?
thanks in advance, i hope that’s all for my questions.
You didn’t post the model of drive that you have but according to your questions I’m guessing that you have the H1U or G1U model of the My Book Essentials.
The My Book Essentials drive is just a plain storage drive so it does not include any full version software. It only has a trial version of the Memeo backup program. This software was just included if a customer was interested in using it but it is not required. You can manually copy/paste data to the drive or you can use another backup program if you want to. If you want to use the Memeo software, then you will need to purchase it. When the software expires, it will quit working.
This drive is backward compatible with USB 1. You are correct that the only difference that you will see is that the drive will transfer much slower over USB 1.
The software is just an installed program and has no control over the drive. When the trial expires, the software will stop working but the drive will continue to work. It will not erase any data on the external, the software will just stop working.
The capacity that you see is correct and you are not losing any space. Hard drive manufacturers use a Decimal measurement to determine capacity and Windows uses a Binary measurement. That is why it shows as a different capacity in Windows. This is very similar to temperature where 0 degrees Celsius is the same as 32 degree Fahrenheit. It is the same temperature just two different scales to measure it.
It depends on how you backup your files. If you are manually copy/pasting the items, you would look at the folder that you pasted to the drive to see if contains all of the items that you are transferring. If you are using backup software, like Memeo, then there should be a Verify or Restore option that will verify the backup or let you see the files that are stored to the drive. This way you can verify that they were successfully transferred to the external.
If you are going to unplug the drive from your system make sure that you use the Safely Eject in Windows to prevent any damage to the drives data or partition. If you did a manual copy/paste then you should have no problem transferring the data from your drive to another computer. If you used backup software, then it may be a little more difficult. You usually have to install the same software that you did the backup with, have it activate the backup plan, then restore the data. Sometimes you can bypass the software and access the backup folder directly but that is not recommended since it can damage the backup and then the backup will cease to work on your home computer and it may need to be re-setup.
Sorry i haven’t been back on this site and that i didn’t do this earlier but: Thank you very very much for your elaborate answer. It has answered all those questions clearly.
Sadly, i have another question…
Every time i start my computer, it shows my computer’s logo “E” which is normal. I have an emachines and it shows this and then moves to windows xp logo, then starts up; just as any other computer would. However, it gets stuck there on “E.” It freezes up. So i always have to unplug the usb from my WD, let my computer start up and then re-plug in the usb to my WD. How do i remedy this problem?
Also, thanks to Bill S for helping me out as well! I would like to thank him personally and publicly so he reaps the merits he deserves!
This is a common problem when your computer tries to read or boot from the USB drive because it sees it attached. When the drive is disconnected, then it can boot fine. The only thing that you can try is disable booting to USB or “Other” devices in your BIOS. This way your system doesn’t look at any external drives during bootup. If you don’t have this option or it still happens, then you will need to disconnect the drive when you are rebooting or powering on your system.
There is another option that you can try but it can sometimes cause problems. If you BIOS has a “Legacy USB” setting, you can try disabling it and see if that works. However, use that option with caution. A lot of times when this option is turned off or disabled, then your USB keyboard and mouse will not work in DOS mode. This means that you will not be able to use keystrokes like F2, F12, etc. when you are booting to try and get into your BIOS again or Windows Safe Mode.
