WD

[Rina]

The WD is not connected through a Hub.
I think you're right and will need to buy a new EXH.
Many thanks for your help.
I really appreciate everything you (and Randy) have said.

Rina

 

[Jimmysb]

Hi Randy



Thanks for the information.

We tried to do the ‘check’ you suggested, but the ‘Verify Backup’ was greyed out.

We also tried to erase the WD My Passport, with the idea of starting all over again, but were unable to erase it!

We tried several suggested ways of erasing the WD but to no avail.
I'm wondering if the problem is being caused by Ventura as prior to this the WD worked fine. I've checked the WD software, which is up to date.
Many thanks for your support with problem.

Rina

Reading further down the article (my verify is also greyed out) it seems this is only for network back up, not USB drive.

 

[Rina]

Many thanks for the additional information.

Much appreciated.

Rina

 

[Randy B. Singer]

We tried to do the ‘check’ you suggested, but the ‘Verify Backup’ was greyed out.

We also tried to erase the WD My Passport, with the idea of starting all over again, but were unable to erase it!

We tried several suggested ways of erasing the WD but to no avail.

As I said previously, the WD My Passport is a POS. If it isn't working, that isn't at all surprising. They have a horrendous failure rate. You should return it to WD under warranty.

I'm wondering if the problem is being caused by Ventura as prior to this the WD worked fine.

No, there is nothing wrong with Ventura that would cause such a problem. At least not that anyone has reported.

I've checked the WD software, which is up to date.

An external hard drive for a Macintosh shouldn't require any additional software. Which makes me wonder what "WD software" you are using, what it's supposed to do, and if maybe it is the cause of your problems.

Personally, I'd call WD support, and ask them to either guide me on making the hard drive work, ask them to replace it under warranty if they think that it is defective, and if they don't think that either is appropriate, ask for my money back.

 

[Rina]

Hi Randy



Thanks for the information.

We tried to do the ‘check’ you suggested, but the ‘Verify Backup’ was greyed out.

We also tried to erase the WD My Passport, with the idea of starting all over again, but were unable to erase it!

We tried several suggested ways of erasing the WD but to no avail.
I'm wondering if the problem is being caused by Ventura as prior to this the WD worked fine. I've checked the WD software, which is up to date.
Many thanks for your support with problem.

Rina

Hi Randy, will do as you suggest.
Do you know of any good EHDs please?
Many thanks

Rina

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Do you know of any good EHDs please?

Mike Bombich is the developer of Carbon Copy Cloner, a very popular backup cloning software program. So he has a boatload of experience as to which hard drives are good and which aren't.

He has a very helpful page dishing on both:
https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/choosing-backup-drive

At this point, I think that all external drives should be SSD's, for performance and compatibility with APFS reasons. Especially drives used for backup.

I personally prefer to put together my own external SSD's, but I know that isn't a lot of people's cup of tea. So, this ready to use SSD is a decent compromise of performance and price, but only middling longevity unless you get it in a size that is at least twice what you might ever need:

Samsung T7, 1TB Portable SSD, up to 1050MB/s, USB 3.2 Gen2
$85
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0874YJP92

 

[Lifeisabeach]

Good morning

I wonder if there is anybody who can help with a problem I have?

I use a WD Passport, which I have encrypted with a password, to back up my Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro is running the latest version of Ventura.

I back up my work through Time Machine.

I have only just realised, that whilst backing up, everything appears to be working fine, when in fact nothing is being written to the Passport! The ‘latest’ folder has nothing in it!

What is the problem and are there any solutions?

First off, I agree with the others that the WD Passport is a real piece and should be replaced on that basis alone. That said, the problem may not be the drive itself. There have been issues with Ventura and Time Machine backups, and I was plagued by these myself. I have a thread about it, but basically I had all the appearances of successful backups to my Time Capsule (an old-school Apple Time Capsule, with a drive replaced less than 3 years ago), but the backups never actually made it to the TC. Daily snapshots were being made and ready to upload, but not actually uploading. I was able to determine this using one of the tools in TinkerTool System that was able to show me the state of local snapshots and what backups are on the TC, as well as let me delete any individual one. The solution? I ran Onyx' maintenance tools to clear the caches, rebuilt Spotlight, etc etc. And my backups resumed proper operation. That honestly surprised me, but I've been problem-free since. It would have been easy to blame the issue on the TC hardware, but it's operating like a champ again.