From: Joe on
I've posted the following questions on the WD home page forum and sent them
to their tech support- waiting for a response- but maybe somebody here could
offer some ideas.
*******
1. I have 3 PCs in my office. I have successfully installed my WD My Book
and with the Smartdrive software have backed up my main computer. Can I now
move My Book to the other PCs and back them up too without confusing the MY
Book? I see that the Smartdrive software recognizes the name of my main
computer- so I presume it will do the same for the others and be able to
keep the file separate?

2. Though I find the Smartdrive software OK for a simple backup- I also have
Acronis backup software. Can I also use the Acronis software on My Book and
simply have it backup files to a separate folder on the My Book without
causing a problem? I understand that most backup programs mark each file
that is backed up- so I don't know how 2 different backup programs could be
used without causing a problem but maybe it's possible. I'd like to use the
Acronis software to do an image backup of the entire drive.

From: Yousuf Khan on
On 6/30/2010 2:03 AM, Joe wrote:
> I've posted the following questions on the WD home page forum and sent
> them to their tech support- waiting for a response- but maybe somebody
> here could offer some ideas.
> *******
> 1. I have 3 PCs in my office. I have successfully installed my WD My
> Book and with the Smartdrive software have backed up my main computer.
> Can I now move My Book to the other PCs and back them up too without
> confusing the MY Book? I see that the Smartdrive software recognizes the
> name of my main computer- so I presume it will do the same for the
> others and be able to keep the file separate?

Don't have any knowledge about that.

> 2. Though I find the Smartdrive software OK for a simple backup- I also
> have Acronis backup software. Can I also use the Acronis software on My
> Book and simply have it backup files to a separate folder on the My Book
> without causing a problem? I understand that most backup programs mark
> each file that is backed up- so I don't know how 2 different backup
> programs could be used without causing a problem but maybe it's
> possible. I'd like to use the Acronis software to do an image backup of
> the entire drive.

This should be entirely possible. It's just another file system, afterall.

Yousuf Khan
From: Lynn McGuire on
> 1. I have 3 PCs in my office. I have successfully installed my WD My Book and with the Smartdrive software have backed up my main
> computer. Can I now move My Book to the other PCs and back them up too without confusing the MY Book? I see that the Smartdrive
> software recognizes the name of my main computer- so I presume it will do the same for the others and be able to keep the file separate?

I use robocopy to backup all of our hard drives on the LAN to
internal backup hard drives and external drives. The script is:

mkdir logs
robocopy \\gui1\c gui1_c /s /e /v /r:0 /xj /log:logs\gui1_c.txt /tee
robocopy \\sc\c sc_c /s /e /v /r:0 /xj /log:logs\sc_c.txt /tee
robocopy \\ks\c ks_c /s /e /v /r:0 /xj /log:logs\ks_c.txt /tee
attrib -h -s gui1_c
attrib -h -s sc_c
attrib -h -s ks_c
date /t
time /t
echo "" > lasttime
dir
dir logs

Lynn
From: Rod Speed on
Joe wrote:

> I've posted the following questions on the WD home page forum and
> sent them to their tech support- waiting for a response- but maybe
> somebody here could offer some ideas.
> *******
> 1. I have 3 PCs in my office. I have successfully installed my WD My
> Book and with the Smartdrive software have backed up my main
> computer. Can I now move My Book to the other PCs and back them up
> too without confusing the MY Book? I see that the Smartdrive software
> recognizes the name of my main computer- so I presume it will do the
> same for the others and be able to keep the file separate?

> 2. Though I find the Smartdrive software OK for a simple backup- I
> also have Acronis backup software. Can I also use the Acronis
> software on My Book and simply have it backup files to a separate
> folder on the My Book without causing a problem?

Yes, you can tell TI where to put the backups.

> I understand that most backup programs mark each file that is backed up-so I don't know how 2 different backup
> programs could be used without causing a problem but maybe it's possible.

Yes it is, Acronis keeps track of what has been backed up separately from that OS level flag.

> I'd like to use the Acronis software to do an image backup of the entire drive.

That will work fine and you can use it to do separate incremental backups etc too.