WD My Passport has an Administrator file(s) for an old laptop. How do I delete them?

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rsmoore155

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Oct 12, 2014
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I no longer have a laptop that had been backed up on my WD My Passport drive. I have been manually deleting the files from WD SmartWare.swstor folder. I ran into a folder that requires Administrator access and I do not remember the password.

How do I remove the folder and its contents to make room for a Windows 7 full backup of my existing laptop?

A snipet of the types of files with a "Date Modified" of 2008 are: Security Catalog, Setup Information, GPD and PPD files..
 
Solution
WyomingKnott
Bear in mind that Windows 7 backup will not make a whole system backup unless the backup drive has a higher capacity than the system drive. If you have a 500 GB system drive with 100 GB of files on it, Windows 7 backup will not back it up to a 250 GB drive. A bit strange.

You can use Disk Management re-initialize, partition, and format the drive. If you don't have admin access to your own machine (a bad position to be in), you can download Parted Magic, make a boot CD, and initialize the drive with that.
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rsmoore155

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Oct 12, 2014
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The only reason I did not want to reformat the WD My Passport drive is I have this current laptop backed up to it. If I reformat, then I will not have my last backup.

How do I reformat this type of drive? Can you point me to an easy way to reformat it? Then when that is complete, will all the WD software be removed and I can use Windows 7 Backup software to backup this laptop? I really dislike using the WD Smartware software that the Drive came with.
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

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Aug 29, 2006
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Bear in mind that Windows 7 backup will not make a whole system backup unless the backup drive has a higher capacity than the system drive. If you have a 500 GB system drive with 100 GB of files on it, Windows 7 backup will not back it up to a 250 GB drive. A bit strange.

You can use Disk Management re-initialize, partition, and format the drive. If you don't have admin access to your own machine (a bad position to be in), you can download Parted Magic, make a boot CD, and initialize the drive with that.
 
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Solution
R

rsmoore155

Reputable
Oct 12, 2014
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4,510


What actually seemed to work was going into each protected file and changing the permissions to full control and then delete each file. It was tedious, but once individual files were deleted, I could delete the folders. The next step was to defrag the WD external drive which seemed to give me enough contiguous space.

What I don't know is for the next time, whether it will need the same amount of space or does it just update with the changes? How does that work?
 
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WyomingKnott

WyomingKnott

Legenda in Aeternum
Aug 29, 2006
13,249
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Depends on the software and the settings. Almost all backup software will let you do a full backup followed by incremental backups. The incrementals have only the files changed since the last backup; to do a restore you have to start with the full and apply all the incrementals.

CS joke: What's the opposite of increment?

BTW, the best thing is to have at least two backup drives, against an odd occurrence like starting a new full backup and having the machine fail - leaving you no backups, a situation you were trying to avoid.
 
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