WD My Book Essential, how do I view my files?

I got this as a gift from someone who doesnt know computers, but asked at the store what to get. I know it was one of the top back at xmas time.

I don't know how to use this thing. I am having trouble understanding how it works. I just need to back up pictures/video/ notes. I do not need to backup my computer's guts or any programs. So when I got it, I backed up everything and tucked the drive away. Now I am pulling it out to add the the past couple months pictures and stuff for backup. Side note: I have another WD 3 yrs old, external drive that I copy all these things to also, and that one is simple, plug in, copy paste files. No software involved. It looks the same on the external drive files as it does on my computer. BUT this WD My Book Essential 2TB has software and I am lost!!! I did install the software back then. So here I am, I plug in and go to G drive and see a file called WD_Smartware, I do not see my stuff, it is just docs about the drive and junk I do not know what it is but its not pictues files. So I realize I have to open then software, I click the icon and see the two drives (I do let it backup what it showed needed it.) So now I see the drives are: "Lisa-PC" with 138.gb total and the G:drive "My Book" with 1.8 TB total.

Questions are:

1. I am at work but not connected to the internet, do I need to be to see my backed up files? how do I open my pictures?? when I click on my computer-G: My book all there is still is the folder called WD_Smartware. Where's my stuff? LOL How do I see it? The tabs in the software are Home, Backup, Retrieve and settings.

2. Looking at this now has made me see I have 389.5 MB free on my computer! Guess that explains why it is soooooo slow, duh! I thought I saw somewhere there was a way to use a drive as an actual drive, is this kind one I can do that with? I dont think I will though because its a laptop and I am not going to drag the exrternal all around the plce lol, but could I?

Thanks in advance!!!!

 

Hi Missy,
First transfer all un-nessecary files/data to the external, ie/eg: things that are not required on the laptop when you are not at home, possibly music & Pics (family Pictures in particular) this will free up space and help speed it up,

What O/S are you running? Christer has a useful link in Xp about moving default folders
http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-xp/49222-moving-windows-xp-default-folders-rev1.html this may not be exactly what you need but it may help

Second, how often do you do Disk Clean-up & Defragmentation both of these tools are helpful for speeding up your machine, apart from Windows defrag, there are many defragmenters on offer and some of the best can be found through links in this forum, as to the frequency of these 2 tools I do them both weekly at least and generally when I am bored & can't think of anything to do!?

I hope these suggestions may help
Jac

 

Hi, from what I can figure out without having one, you do not have to use the software unless you want to use the features that the software offers.
Here are some comments:

he Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition is a USB 2.0, two-drive external storage device that can be used in either RAID 1 for data security or as a single volume in RAID 0 to take advantage of the full capacity of its two drives. Preconfigured in RAID 1, the My Book Mirror is not intended for high throughput performance, but we found its read and writes speeds to be on par with other external hard drives--including non-RAID and single-volume hard drives. The are two versions of the My Book Mirror Edition: a $289 1TB model and a $499 2TB model. In its default RAID 1 configuration, however, you will get roughly half the storage capacity since your data is written to each drive. We reviewed the 2TB version, which can be found for as little as $399 online at the time of this writing. We recommend either My Book Mirror Edition drive if you are looking for a simple and secure direct-attached storage solution.

Design and features
The WD My Book Mirror Edition looks good, with its sleek black casing and curved corners. If the single-drive My Book Essential or Home Editions look like a hard cover book, the My Book Mirror resembles War and Peace at nearly 4 inches thick. Though it's relatively compact for a two-bay enclosure, its power adapter is bulky, which makes the whole package a little less portable than it could be.
The drive has an LED on the front that changes color with the drive's status: powered on, in use, idle, and error. On the back, you will find a power connector, a low profile USB 2.0 port (similar to one found in pocket-size external hard drives), and a power switch button. There're no FireWire or eSATA connections, which is disappointing but understandable as the drive is preconfigured with RAID 1--which is optimized not for speed but data protection. (The company's pricier My Book Studio drives add FireWire 800 and eSATA interfaces.) In RAID 1, the 2TB My Book Mirror Edition provides roughly one terabyte of capacity. The benefit is if one of the hard drives dies, you just need to replace it, and there's no data loss or usage interruption during the process.
You can change the hard drives into a RAID 0 configuration and get the most storage space out of it, but then the data will be more vulnerable to corruption (if just one of the two drives fail, you'll lose all your data). However, you can't set up the two drives as two separate volumes, where the status and data integrity of one drive has nothing to do with that of the other.
We really like the fact that the internal hard drives are user-replaceable. You don't even need tools replace them. Though it's not obvious, you simply press on a spot in the middle of the My Book Mirror's top front edge and the cover will pop open giving you access to the drives. The My Book Mirror uses standard 3.5-inch SATA hard drives, but there's a catch--you can only use Western Digital hard drives. While this limits the device's flexibility, it's not really a problem as WD hard drives are popular and sold for relatively competitive prices.
The My Book Mirror Edition comes with two USB 2.0 cables of different lengths--5 inches and 2 inches--to accommodate where you want to put it. This is a nice gesture as we have run into drives that don't come with enough cables.
The drive also ships with a full version of WD Backup Anywhere and a 30-day trial of Mionet for remote access. WD Backup Anywhere is a wizard-driven backup solution that allows for backing up your selected data to any other media, even onto your iPod. We tried it out, and it worked as intended. It's important to note that the serial key (required to make the software work in nontrial mode) is printed at a corner on the back of the setup instructions poster--a very obscure place.
We also tried out the Mionet service and that worked well too. We were able to access the hard drive's content over the Internet and drag its folders and files onto a local computer. As the drive is not a NAS device, the host computer has to be on and is connected to the Internet for this to happen. After 30 days, Mionet will cost you $8 a month or $80 a year.
Western Digital SmartWare
See your life safe in one place.
• See your backup as it happens.
Visual backup displays your content in categories and shows the progress of your backup.
• Protect your data automatically.
Automatic, continuous backup will instantly make a second copy whenever you add or change a file.
• Bring back lost files effortlessly.
Retrieve your valuable data to its original location whether you've lost all your data or just overwritten an important file.
• Take control.
Customize your backup, set drive security, run diagnostics, manage the power settings, and more from the Western Digital (WD) SmartWareâ„¢ control center.
Drive Lock
Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from unauthorized access or theft with password protection and military-grade 256-bit hardware-based encryption.
Illuminated Capacity Gauge
See at a glance how much space is available on your drive.
USB 2.0 Interface
A simple connection that offers convenience and compatibility among multiple computers.

 

Thanks Jac! I am running Vista... loved XP!! I removed some pics last night, but wow it got 138 GIG and only 4.58 free YIKES!!!