Can A Western Digital Mybook External Backup Hard Drive
Posted in Backup Hard Drive by manyu time 25 Nov
Western Digital has announced 5 new external hard drives of various shapes and sizes.
There are 3 new My Passport drives (My Passport Essential, My Passport Essential SE, and My Passport for Mac) and 2 new My Book models (My Book Essential and My Book for Mac). Each of these will ship with WD’s new Mac / PC-friendly backup solution, SmartWare, which provides an “[e]asy, visual way to protect, store and manage your important data.”
One of WD’s goals was to make the software easy for everyone to use and help users avoid making mistakes with their precious data. To cut down on problems, SmartWare relies on user-friendly visual aids and simple, straightforward options to backup and/or retrieve files. In the demo I saw, the software appeared to be very intuitive and included some nice touches like a search function and real-time backup status reporting.
After configuring the software the very first time you boot up the drive, SmartWare will run automatically (if you allow it), providing an automatic and continuous “backup and drive management” solution. The software comes built-in, i.e. it resides on a separate partition on the hard drive, but the auto-backup can be disabled.
As for the “safer” attributes of the new drives, each one comes equipped with WD Drive Lock – password protection + 256-bit hardware encryption. Once the password is set, the owner (or anyone who knows the pw) is the only person who can access the data. If the password is lost, there is NO way to retrieve it because the password is never shared with Western Digital in any capacity.
Beyond the password, every bit of data stored on the drive is protected by 256-bit AES encryption. In other words, without the password, the data is basically impossible to access. Might sound a bit over the top, but WD said they wanted to err on the side of total security.
- Access Disk Management by right-clicking on Computer and left-click on Manage. If you don’t have Computer on your Desktop, it should be located in your Start Menu.
- You will get a window with two panes. On the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management. This will load the right pane. You may need to maximize the windows to see all your drives.
- In the lower right pane, you should see a list of all available drives/devices. Find the drive listing that corresponds to the one that you want to partition and format. It typically has a black bar indicating unallocated space.
Important: You may need to initialize the drive. If so, please see Answer ID 3336: How to initialize or write a signature to a hard drive in Windows Vista .
If there is a blue bar, then the drive has already been partitioned and formatted. Make sure, that if you have data on the drive, you back it up before proceeding. Once you are ready to proceed, right-click on the blue bar and choose Delete Volume… You will get a pop-up window asking you if you really want to delete the partition. Click Yes. The bar should now be black.
- Right-click on the black bar to see a menu of available options. Left-click on New Simple Volume…
- The Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard will show up. Left-click on Next to proceed to the next screen.
- This is where you can set a partition on the drive. By default Windows chooses the whole drive so you can left-click on Next.Note: For creating multiple partitions on a drive, you will have to type in a smaller amount in megabytes, and it will partition and format only that amount. For example, if you have a 500 GB hard drive and you want to split the drive into two partitions, you could type in 250000 (for 250 GB’s) in the Simple volume size in MB area.
However, once you finish formatting this first partition, you will need to go back and follow these steps again to partition and format the left-over unallocated area of the drive. Then you will have your two partitions. Remember, going back to change, or add, partitions will destroy any data on the drive. So be sure to plan out ahead how many and what size partitions you want before creating any.
- Choose the drive letter that you want the drive to have. By default Windows will choose the next available drive letter. Then click on Next.
- This is the format screen. Make sure that the File System is set to NTFS. The Allocation Unit Size can be left at Default. In the Volume Label field you can give the drive a name if you want. Check the box that says Perform a Quick Format so that Windows will format the drive quickly. Then click on Next.
- The next screen gives you a confirmation of all the steps that you just went through. Click on Next.
- The listing for the drive (Disk 1 in the picture below) will say Formatting as it formats the drive.
- When the drive is done (Disk 1 in the picture below) the bar will be blue and the drive will say Healthy.
Note: To install a Western Digital Media Center, Dual-option Backup, Dual-option Backup USB 2.0, or Essential USB 2.0 drive, please follow the instructions that are included on the Quick Install Guide that came with the drive to install necessary drivers for the hard drive. The guide can also be found on the CD that came with the drive and in the document library. Once the drivers are installed, you can follow the directions below to partition and format the hard drive, if necessary.
- Access Disk Management by right-clicking on Computer and left-click on Manage. If you don’t have Computer on your Desktop, it should be located in your Start Menu.
- You will get a window with two panes. On the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management. This will load the right pane. You may need to maximize the windows to see all your drives.
- In the lower right pane, you should see a list of all available drives/devices. Find the drive listing that corresponds to the one that you want to partition and format. It typically has a black bar indicating unallocated space.
Important: You may need to initialize the drive. If so, please see Answer ID 3336: How to initialize or write a signature to a hard drive in Windows Vista .
If there is a blue bar, then the drive has already been partitioned and formatted. Make sure, that if you have data on the drive, you back it up before proceeding. Once you are ready to proceed, right-click on the blue bar and choose Delete Volume… You will get a pop-up window asking you if you really want to delete the partition. Click Yes. The bar should now be black.
- Right-click on the black bar to see a menu of available options. Left-click on New Simple Volume…
- The Welcome to the New Simple Volume Wizard will show up. Left-click on Next to proceed to the next screen.
- This is where you can set a partition on the drive. By default Windows chooses the whole drive so you can left-click on Next.Note: For creating multiple partitions on a drive, you will have to type in a smaller amount in megabytes, and it will partition and format only that amount. For example, if you have a 500 GB hard drive and you want to split the drive into two partitions, you could type in 250000 (for 250 GB’s) in the Simple volume size in MB area.
However, once you finish formatting this first partition, you will need to go back and follow these steps again to partition and format the left-over unallocated area of the drive. Then you will have your two partitions. Remember, going back to change, or add, partitions will destroy any data on the drive. So be sure to plan out ahead how many and what size partitions you want before creating any.
- Choose the drive letter that you want the drive to have. By default Windows will choose the next available drive letter. Then click on Next.
- This is the format screen. Make sure that the File System is set to NTFS. The Allocation Unit Size can be left at Default. In the Volume Label field you can give the drive a name if you want. Check the box that says Perform a Quick Format so that Windows will format the drive quickly. Then click on Next.
- The next screen gives you a confirmation of all the steps that you just went through. Click on Next.
- The listing for the drive (Disk 1 in the picture below) will say Formatting as it formats the drive.
- When the drive is done (Disk 1 in the picture below) the bar will be blue and the drive will say Healthy.
Note: To install a Western Digital Media Center, Dual-option Backup, Dual-option Backup USB 2.0, or Essential USB 2.0 drive, please follow the instructions that are included on the Quick Install Guide that came with the drive to install necessary drivers for the hard drive. The guide can also be found on the CD that came with the drive and in the document library. Once the drivers are installed, you can follow the directions below to partition and format the hard drive, if necessary.
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