Updated My Book Software - Restore & Backup tabs greyed out

[UKGuy]

I updated the software on My Book Essential today to 1.6.0.  It seems to have gone well but now I notice that the two tabs for Restore and Backup are greyed out so I cannot retreive a file.

Any help appreciated.

[rlm1305]

Same experence...what to do next next?

[livreur]

same here (my book elite).  the drive shows up on home tab but backup and retrieve tabs are dimmed.  power recycle both the drive and PC didn't help.  I did get an error msg during updating to 1.6; something like "smartware manager encountered a problem and needs to close".    I also tried to restore my system (XP SP3) but couldn't even get the previous version of smartware  to work.

[Wizer · Accepted solution]

Hi all, 

Click on the My Book on the home tab, after the drive is selected you will have access to backup and retrieve

[UKGuy]

I regret to report that this does not work on my machine. After categrosizing my files (which it does every single time I open Smartware & takes some time) the Backup and Restore tabs are still greyed out.

Any other ideas?

[UKGuy]

I need to apologise!  I just realised you meant to click on the icon where it says "My Book Essential". When I did this the two tabs appeared as they should.  Sorry and thanks!

[Tymeless]

I upgraded My Book Software to 1.6.2 and have the same issue with the Restore and Backup tabs grayed out.  I however have not solved the issue as the others have. It also is not visable as a hard drive like other divises do when veiwing on my pc.

[SageCommander]

Is Western Digital seriously not going to respond to this problem? I am having the same issue and it's really frustrating. I got a new computer a few months ago, and now I can't even get My Book Essentail to be recognized as a storage device. I downloaded the software and I can't click the backup or retrieve tabs, they're grayed out. The drive doesnt even show up on the home screen when I open SmartWare. 

[Deleted] WD, do you seriously ignore these issues? I've had better support from McDonalds 

[SageCommander]

Oh and BTW, your over the phone support is terrible. Just because my product is 3 years old, I only get 1 free techinical support session? AND they can't even fix the problem! This is ridiculous. I updated to version 1.6.2 and completely lost access to over 700 gigs on my external drive. To top it all off, as a company you don't even have a solution to this type of problem that multiple people are having? My computer is brand new, so don't tell me it's the PC the drive is being connected to. If I didn't need important files on this thing it would already have flown out my 3rd story window. 

[KatzinAZ]

Same issue here, unfortunately.   I see that folks have resolved this by clicking on the icon where it says "My Book Essential".  Unfortunately I do not have any such icon.       I see my computer, and it's internal drives - but the MyBook external drive does not show up on the Home Tab screen.   Looks like the software can't see the drive.

Question -  can you back up the same data to multiple drives?  I did a full backup to one drive, which is stored offsite. This backup is done monthly.  Now I'm trying to backup the same data to a different MyBook onsite - as I'd like to have regular backups running at all times.  Could that be causing the issue?