What are these files?

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi, I am trying to make space on My Passport but there are lots of files that I have no idea what they are so don’t know whether to delete them.

They are a long mix of letters and numbers such as 86e88e4051b8509b8fe3ad303ef637, can anybody explain what they are please?

Thank you

fred

2

Fred,

I’m assuming you use WD Backup. If not disregard my answer.

The best way I know of is to use the Restore option in Backup. On the Restore screen look at the instructions in Help in the lower left corner… If you have more than one Backup Plan, select the one you are checking. You do not have to actually restore files. Select one of the backup dates in the right column. After a while the folders will display. Select one and work your way to the file(s) you want to check. You may be able to open files. Pictures anyway. If you find files you want to remove, you can delete them, but make sure they are not on the Backup Plan or they will be backed up again!

The code you list could be a folder under xx.swtor. If you opened WD Backup.swstor, continue opening folders until you find one with History and Volumexxx. The Volume folder should contain all the folders and files you selected to backup. Then in the Backup Plan select the folder/files you do want to save.

Another approach to removing files from Backup is to erase the drive! Make sure all the files you want to keep are on the PC first. Once you erase the backups, they are gone forever.

NOTE: Deleting files on the PC does NOT actually delete them on the backup drive. It just moves them from the Volumexxx folder to the History folder with a similar name.

3

Hi Cliff

Thank you for your reply, however the files were created using Smartware

Regards

Fred Warwick

4

Fred,

OK, but the file structure is still History and Volume folders.so you can find the backed up files in Volume. You might find some help in History. These are usually small size (KB or MB) and have modified names. I don’t know much else about Smartware. I gave it up when Backup came out.

HInt, if you ever change to Backup, you might need to remove the WD Smartware.swstor folder on the drive.

Cliff

5

Thanks again Cliff

Yes in the Volume file is the identifiable data from my pc, however in the Volume file there are also numerous of these files with very long names that are unidentifiable as to content or type???

Regards

Fred Warwick

6

Fred,

I do not find extra files in my Volume folder with WD Backup.

Are you looking perhaps at Volume under the History folder? That folder does contain some unusually file names. They seem to be tracking the the changes.

Cliff

7

Hi Cliff

This is the content of the Volume file.

SAND and Users contain my useful back up data, the rest of the folders don’t seem to contain any of my data so I think can be deleted.

I’d like to get rid of Windows Old which is huge but I can’t seem to delete it.

557×631 49.3 KB

Regards

Fred Warwick

8

Hi Fred,

Wow.  Most of them are old. Seems to me anything  older than 2017 could be deleted. My guess is that these files contain previous version information. Windows Old may be system data before Windows 10. Users and SAND are recent backups and if they hold all of what is on the PC, why not erase the drive and start over? WD Drive Utilities has the Erase option.

Cliff
9

Thanks Cliff

Regards

Fred Warwick