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Download a program called discovery from WD, it is free. When installed, plug in the drive and run the discovery program. Your drive should work properly. Please let me know how it works for you.
Download a program called discovery from WD, it is free. When installed, plug in the drive and run the discovery program. Your drive should work properly. Please let me know how it works for you.
Yes it can,. Your external HDD will show up in "my Computer" as another drive. You can transfer files simply using copy and paste. (or edit -> copy files to folder) which I advise. Bear in mind that hidden, and read only files will not be copied. These files include the mailboxes in Outlook Express. So be careful. I advise making copies of all files of this kind, first.
If you want to back up files on to your external hard drive, you don't need the wddm program. Microsoft Windows usualy comes with a back up program. just open up the windows help and search for back up. and open the back up your files option and then click the link that says click to open backup and restore center. Follow the on screen instrucions and save the files to your external drive. I have an external drive, and I recomend that you do not back up yor files. This is only usefull for saved games. backing up music and movies takes to long. What I do is move all of my music and video files over to the external drive and I can acess them drictly from the drive itself. you can't do that if you back the files up, the files end up being commpressed into a zip file of some sort that says backup drive. when I installed my external drive, it was given a drive letter. I open up my computer and itsays My Book - with drive letter G. I click on it like it is a regular drive and I can save stuff to it. I save my videos to this drive and can watch them at any time. If you want to back up files I recomend unchecking the back up music and video options and saving music and vide files in the manor that I mentioned earlier. Then back up all other files and it will get done much quicker as these files usually are not near as big as music and video files are. So you can ignore the error message and be carefull not to download any updates for these drives. I did this and the drive came up with an error message that told me that my new drive was defective and needed to be replaced. I was angry so I took it back to the store, and replaced the broken drive for the same one. I will never again install any updates for my external hard drive. the error message said something about having no drivers, but the help info for the drive said that the drivers are automatically installed for all windows opperating machines. once again I urge all people with the western digital My Book essential and simmilar drives - stay away from those bad update files!
If you mean accessing files vs. programs, do the following: plug in your hard drive, wait until the pc recognizes and installs it, open up "My computer" shrink the window by clicking on the middle icon at top right of the window. Move the window (click and hold the mouse on top colored bar to drag it) to one side so you can see the folder(s) /file(s) you wish to copy and the window showing your external drive. Now you can simply drag the folders over from the pc desktop to your external hard drive.
If you are referring to running programs from your external drive, you need to insert your program(s) install disk to your pc and when going through the install menu(s) you should see a question asking where you wish to install the program and it will have a default location which you can easily change by typing the location of your external drive or selecting it from "browse" button within install program. Be aware that some files will still be installed to your pc (system registry files) required to interface with the operating system so you can launch the program(s) from your external drive but most likely not independent of the pc containing the main operating system. A bit wordy I know, but hope this helps!
I would first check the capacity of your external hard drive. From "My Computer", right-click the drive letter of the external drive and select Properties. Make sure that the drive has the amount you need in *free* space - it's possible that it's just full with other files.
If this is the first time you're using this drive, you may need to format it before it will recognize its own capacity. Right-click the drive letter and select Format.
when you click on my computer it should show up as a drive letter like any other installed drive. you should be able to copy files and folders to and from the drive with cut and paste or copy & paste
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