How to back up an existing backup made with Western Digital Discovery backup software
This may well be a stupid question:
Over the years I used the WD Discovery backup software that came with my WD My Book Elite to back up my desktop.
I now have a 4 TB WD Passport drive and am using Acronis True Image 2019 for this purpose.
I now want to clean up the My Book Elite and use it as a secondary backup source but first need to transfer the existing documents onto the new drive using the Acronis backup facility. When trying to do so, I discovered that only a very small portion of the files were transferred, these being the odd backups I had performed manually. It seems that the backups done using the WD software did not backup.
My thinking is that this is because the latter was backed up using WD proprietary software that Acronis cannot/won't use (a bit like a German speaker refusing to accept a Spanish book in his library). If so, what is the correct way to transfer the older backup that was made using different software onto the new drive in Acronis format that would enable me to recover the files from the new drive at some future date when I no longer have access to the WD software?
My assumption is that I would first have to use the recovery facility in WD Discovery to transfer the files to the new disk and not the Acronis backup one. Am I correct and, if so, is there anything else I need to look out for?
Many thanks,
Paul
Hi Steve,
Interestingly, they appear to have the usual extensions (eg.xls, etc). However, they are all placed in a folder called
WD Smartware.swstore/PAUL-PC/Volume.f1da8d49.af62.11e2.8777.806e6f6e6963.
Thinking that Acronis may not like the nomenclature of these folders, I unticked the "exclude system files" box, thinking that this may help but no dice.
Paul
Paul, as I have several WD drives, MyBook etc, I downloaded and installed WD Smartware and created a small backup on my MyBookLive network drive, where the folder structure is very similar to the one you see.
I then created an ATI backup of Files & Folders (after mapping a network drive to the WD location) and ran the backup. I was then able to open the backup .tib file and see the same contents as I see on the WD drive itself.
Steve, if you did all of that for me, I'm most grateful; especially for the fact that you have the same drives and software and can see exactly what to I need to do.
I'm presuming the only reason you had to map the drive is because yours is on a network and not because of any issue with the specific WD Explorer folder on the WD Elite drive (N) which, like the WD Passport drive (M) is connected to my computer via USB and both of which show up as drives on my desktop.
To re-test, I went back into ATI and took out all the other folders I wanted to include in the backup, changing the source setting on drive N to incorporate just the user folder called "Paul" that sits under the WD backup folder with the long name, but it backs up nothing notwithstanding that Acronis says the backup was successful after just one minute.
I must be missing something really basic or silly. As I say, the drives have no problem seeing and talking to one another, the manual backups on N being transferred to M without any problems.
Paul, the target WD MyBookLive is a network drive so was easiest to map a network drive letter to it for testing as I am using it as the Source for my backup task.
I will try to document my Files & Folders backup task settings that work for me.
Steve, that was such a help!
My apologies for the tardy reply but I had been trying out varying options and eventually managed to do the backup after I had deleted every single item from the exclusion list as per your example. The backup itself took ATI some considerable time to preform and verify.
I can only presume that WD Explorer backups are included in one or more of these exclusions and hope this topic can help others with the same issues in future.
I'm now going to go through the backed up items on the new disk to ensure, insofar as is possible by opening and closing a number of the files, that these are all ok and can be recovered when and if necessary before deleting them from the WD Elite drive.
Would you suggest I do a complete reformat of the WD Elite drive before using it for future backups or would I lose WD Software, etc that I might need in future? I installed Treesize free as recommended by you in another discussion so that I could very selectively go through files and folders, deleting unwanted items one at a time but find that for the very large files Treesize freezes up after a while and doesn't perform the deletion.
Thank you so much for your assistance!
Paul, glad that the backup settings information has been helpful and you have the backup made!
Would you suggest I do a complete reformat of the WD Elite drive before using it for future backups or would I lose WD Software, etc that I might need in future?
You should only need to remove the WD SmartWare.swstor root folder from the drive once you are sure that you have everything secured on the new drive. If there is other WD software on the drive, then you would need to know what these are and decide if you need them or not. You should be able to go to the WD Support website and download the latest versions of specific applications.
Steve, have just finalised deleting files from the WD Elite drive and setting it up for new backups. I can't thank you enough for your advice and help: I kid you not when I say that your presence on this forum adds so much value to Acronis users that it makes the package worth twice the price! It really does highlight much love and dedication is put into something when it comes from the heart as witnessed by this and the other work you do. I only hope Acronis appreciates how much value you add to their product, building up as you are a mountain of practical, clear advice on so many aspects of the package.
Some interesting things that arose wile I was working and which may be of interest to others:
- I had a moment of panic when I renamed the file that one of my backups was going to, only to find that Acronis lost the link and told me it had no backups available for recovery. It also in this case didn't give me the option of browsing for the correct link as it had previously. Fortunately all was well once I put the original "correct" name back in.
- While doing all the purging of files yesterday, my heart dropped when I discovered that the Acronis backups built up over the past couple of weeks again showed no contents (you may recall that I had this problem previously and sorted it out with your help by reinstalling Acronis). Needless to say, I panicked a bit but all was well when I booted the machine up again this morning. I can only imagine that File Explorer was in a bit of a tizz, it working extremely slowly while I was deleting literally millions of files.
Thanks again,
Paul
Paul Christie wrote:Steve, have just finalised deleting files from the WD Elite drive and setting it up for new backups. I can't thank you enough for your advice and help: I kid you not when I say that your presence on this forum adds so much value to Acronis users that it makes the package worth twice the price! It really does highlight how much love and dedication is put into something when it comes from the heart as witnessed by this and the other work you do. I only hope Acronis appreciates how much value you add to their product, building up as you are a mountain of practical, clear advice on so many aspects of the package.
Some interesting things that arose wile I was working and which may be of interest to others:
- I had a moment of panic when I renamed the file that one of my backups was going to, only to find that Acronis lost the link and told me it had no backups available for recovery. It also in this case didn't give me the option of browsing for the correct link as it had previously. Fortunately all was well once I put the original "correct" name back in.
- While doing all the purging of files yesterday, my heart dropped when I discovered that the Acronis backups built up over the past couple of weeks again showed no contents (you may recall that I had this problem previously and sorted it out with your help by reinstalling Acronis). Needless to say, I panicked a bit but all was well when I booted the machine up again this morning. I can only imagine that File Explorer was in a bit of a tizz, it working extremely slowly while I was deleting literally millions of files.
Thanks again,
Paul
Paul, thank you for your kind words, am glad to help other users via these forums - helps keep the 'little grey cells' active and working in my retirement! Glad that you have been able to do all you wanted here!