New Backup

Welshy74

Senior Member
[FONT=&quot]Hi all I was wondering if I could get some help. I currently have WD My Passport Ultra as my back up but not happy with it. I click on backup and it stays on copying files for ever. Currently 45mins as we speak. There seems to be no way of me checking its status as to how far its gone or what its doing. The data backed up info on the right is not changing. The reason I bought this was that I was told it was a plug in hard drive and forget and it will update any changes made to the photos I have uploaded/edited. I could drag and drop files but that is defeating the object of why I purchased this in the first place. Your advice would be much appreciated on what I may be doing wrong or a replacement option. Please bear in mind I am not computer literate. Thanks all.[/FONT]
 

PapaST

Senior Member
Most external drives do come with some sort of backup program. And they should be able to schedule backups. This might be a last resort suggestion but perhaps you should wipe the external drive clean and then start a new backup plan. Maybe it's getting hung up on adding to the current backup due to some type of corruption.
 

PapaST

Senior Member
Also, if you're on windows maybe you should run a dskchk to check the integrity of the drive. Apple has the same thing but it escapes me right now.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
[FONT="]Hi all I was wondering if I could get some help. I currently have WD My Passport Ultra as my back up but not happy with it. I click on backup and it stays on copying files for ever. Currently 45mins as we speak. There seems to be no way of me checking its status as to how far its gone or what its doing. The data backed up info on the right is not changing. The reason I bought this was that I was told it was a plug in hard drive and forget and it will update any changes made to the photos I have uploaded/edited. I could drag and drop files but that is defeating the object of why I purchased this in the first place. Your advice would be much appreciated on what I may be doing wrong or a replacement option. Please bear in mind I am not computer literate. Thanks all.[/FONT]
Are you running WD Backup (the software application that should have been included with your drive)? If not, you can download it for free.
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Are you running WD Backup (the software application that should have been included with your drive)? If not, you can download it for free.

Not to hijack this thread, but I also have a question since you seem to have the same drive.

I am running WD Backup. I can select the source folder to backup from. (I only want to backup from my "Pictures" folder,) but I can't seem to select the destination folder.
I have made a new folder on the WD drive called "Pictures2", but it's still backing up to "Pictures"

Is there a way to select a specific destination folder ?
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Backup software that comes free with hard drives is crap.

There are a brazillion backup programs that are better... and more flexible.

You can start by learning about the one that comes with your OS...
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
If the WD Back is not working uninstall it and use something else.

Windows has a native tool that supports automated, incremental backups which should get the job done, but you'll need to configure it:

Configure Automatic Backup in Windows 7/8/10

I use Synctoy personally. It does not do anything "automatically"; I tell it when to synch my drives. Once it's configured it takes about three clicks to synchronize my internal slave-drive with a WD external drive. This is just how I prefer to do things.
 

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
I will tell you that the first time I ran WD backup it seemed to take forever. After that initial backup it has been much faster. The first time I ran the backup I had the same feelings that you did @Welshy74
 
incremental backup is the key. It only backs up what had changed instead of starting over with a totally new backup each time.

But like Paul said SyncToy is a easy way to do simple backups. Works well if you want to do just My Documents to My Photos. I set it up for my wife when she was teaching. Had a folder on her school computer, our home desktop and her personal laptop labeled "My School Files" using synctoy. She could work on a file at home and using synctoy she would sync it to a USB drive and carry it to school and sync the USB to that computer. I had a network link so that the desktop and laptop would be synced. The nice thing was that when her school computer melted down and the IT guys came in and told her that all her files would be lost he was surprised because she was not upset on losing all her files. She told him she had a daily backup in 4 different places.
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
That's exactly what's supposed to happen.

The first backup is a Complete Backup... the whole disk to disk
Subsequent backups are Incremental Backups. Those are only files that have changed or been added since the last backup.
 
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