Just purchased a Western Digital 750GB USB 3.0 "My Passport" External Hard Drive for a friend to begin her back up strategy. Looking at all the "stuff" W.D. puts on this drive, and wading my way through just to find the English PDF User Manual has made me wonder whether to just avoid all of it entirely?
Any thoughts as whether or not to avoid the included W.D. software and go with either Windows own backup software or say Acronis instead? The person this Ext drive is intended for needs something as simple and easy as possible....or it just wont happen!
I have heard that the "SmartWare" WD puts on their drives is a rebranded version of Acronis but I cannot attest to that. I personally just got a new 4TB My Book, which I completely formatted before I started using it. Never even looked at their software as I use Acronis True Image for backing up. That's just my personal opinion/preference if it helps.
I set it up for her with an Acronis *full* HDD image (made by me) located on the External Drive along with copies of her "My Documents" and "My Pictures" folders, which is about all she needs to be backed up.
She will connect and backup to the W.D. External Drive whenever she feels the need to, by right click "Copy and Paste", with no W.D. software installed or desired as of now. Her financial documents can be "Copy and Replaced" to her W.D. External Drive folder location(s) as well as they are updated.
reply to mattrixx To backup docs and pics type stuff you might want to look at synctoy 2 (from MS) or something similar. Once installed on PC and set up with folder pairs to external you can use to just back up changed / new files.
·
·