I am a software engineer with 20+ years of experience. From the postings in this forum and discussions with WD support, I am 100% convinced that the WD software developers do not understand the cause of the problem or how to solve it. I don’t think WD developed this software themselves, so they can’t provide proper technical support.
Is there some way I can have a dialog with knowledgeable WD software developers to discuss the cause and solution? see my response below. If possible, please send me an email to get a dialog started. As one support person had said, “Western Digital is a hardware company. Software is not their forte…” hehe, I have said that in other posts, but I don’t know if you’re quoting me, lol
I am frustrated like many other customers. If WD does not resolve this problem soon, I will be forced to throw away my My Book Live and buy another back-up drive from a competitor. now that’s a bit rash, WD makes good hardware.
I was a software developer 40 years ago developing IBM mainframe operating systems and “new” mini computer communications software. I can’t talk details of what is going on here, but after using a comparable backup system called Genie Timeline it has become apparent that WDFME has it’s hooks in the wrong place and does not index changed files and do batch backups. It apparently rescans all your files whenever any one is changed, as if it does not know which file was modified. From Genie Timeline I can see (because it keeps a queue of files to be backed up) that Firefox is making constant changes to its Profile data and I believe this is something or one of the reasons that WDFME runs all the time. When I used Smartware Wdfme was not much of a probplem when I used the Chrome browser, but was a big problem when I used Firefox. Genie Timeline keeps an index of files that need to be backed up and does a periodic backup on an hourly basis (free edition, minimum 3 minutes for paid version) or can be forced at any time. Ergo, there is no constant scanning and or catagorizing like with Smartware. With Genie you can mix catagory and specific file/folder backups and with the paid version you ca exclude files/folders from the catagorized portion of the backup.
We are releasing two new versions that will solve different problems.
The 1.5.4 code line will add support for new product and also have maintenance items within including a better installer to resolve most install/uninstall problems seen.
The 1.5.5 code line will have significant back end changes related to the categorization and copying of files that will significantly reduce the amount of resources used including memory and hard disk i/o.
The time table on both of these releases is not certain yet.
This is great to hear… that there MAY be some fixes coming soon…dont know what they are…and dont know when. But a Good Start! Lets see if their upper tier management knows enough to support their efforts to become ultimately and quickly successful at resolving this issue.
In response to this issue…and because of managements not responding intelligently to this audience…I have already purchased another backup software product. This product knows enough not to be running at 81% full blast when im using my computer. I have had the opportunity to vote with my money on this issue… I just purchased 2 competitors hard drives for Christmas gifts this season based on this issue.
This particular software problem and managements handling of it… has so strongly and negatively affected my loyalty to WD… that I was relieved to be able to try someone elses well regarded products in place of WD for the first time. Im sorry to say their handling of it has driven me so far. I have 11 WD drives in my collection…and this software response by managements choices has been the reason.
I support WD third level upper management doing something significant and very effective. Best Wishes.
We are releasing two new versions that will solve different problems.
The 1.5.3 code line will add support for new product and also have maintenance items within including a better installer to resolve most install/uninstall problems seen.
The 1.5.4 code line will have significant back end changes related to the categorization of files that will significantly reduce the amount of resources used including memory and hard disk i/o.
The time table on both of these releases is not certain yet.
good luck to all of you hangers on. you don’t have to wait for WD’s maybe fixes, just use genie timeline if you don’t need the smartware security locks.
BBBBBrandon, can you detail what any of those ‘backend’ changes are?
This is great to hear… that there MAY be some fixes coming soon…dont know what they are…and dont know when. But a Good Start! Lets see if their upper tier management knows enough to support their efforts to become ultimately and quickly successful at resolving this issue.
In response to this issue…and because of managements not responding intelligently to this audience…I have already purchased another backup software product. This product knows enough not to be running at 81% full blast when im using my computer. I have had the opportunity to vote with my money on this issue… I just purchased 2 competitors hard drives for Christmas gifts this season based on this issue.
This particular software problem and managements handling of it… has so strongly and negatively affected my loyalty to WD… that I was relieved to be able to try someone elses well regarded products in place of WD for the first time. Im sorry to say their handling of it has driven me so far. I have 11 WD drives in my collection…and this software response by managements choices has been the reason.
I support WD third level upper management doing something significant and very effective. Best Wishes.
i wonder how many ‘likes’ your response would get on facebook? i bet it might shock wd.
are you guys with high overhead memory problems using the “category” backup, or file/folder specific backups? I’ve got to believe that when you narrow down the scan to only a few folders the service won’t run wild scanning your whole machine…
are you guys with high overhead memory problems using the “category” backup, or file/folder specific backups? I’ve got to believe that when you narrow down the scan to only a few folders the service won’t run wild scanning your whole machine…
So I can drive my race car as long as I don’t drive it fast?
I had my backups set to files and folders and had maybe 40 folders out of my 150 folders selected. It took two weeks to backup 300gigs of files for a baseline…and it would run from 40%-80% of memory in the background almost continually.
The program doesnt know how to stop, or how to throttle itself down, or how to respect that there is another user on the machine besides itself. The minute it sees cursor movement or a program launch…it should absolutely stop itself, release the resources, and wait for 20 minutes with NO activity to begin running again.
It would also be better if the designers figured out that I might want to set a specific window of time for it to run… ONLY from 1-5am.
The program was also notorious for creating many duplicate folders and contents that had already been saved. It had a bad memory and it seemed to scan ALL the files and folders to try to figure which ones had been updated instead of having some intelligent way to find updated files without having to start over from scretch.
These are my impressions…I could be wrong…this is how I felt it acted because of its behavior.
cman548: If I wanted to save just a few folders…I would have backed up things myself manually…and yes…it would keep on being bothersome with just a few or many files.
Maybe others may have some specific behaviors that they would like to share to be helpful to the “fix it up” crew that is trying to correct this issue.
Please try this test: STOP using Firefox and use Google Chrome instead.
When I do this, I don’t have the WDFME issues.
In any case I stopped using Smartware because I prefer Firefox and I am now using Genie Timeline without any noticeable overhead in addition to being able to back up by catagory and/or files/folders. There is a free edition and a Pro edition. The free one does not do disaster recovery backups. I never used Smartware to backup my C drive which just contains my op system. the free edition aggregates a file change index and copies the files automanically every hour or you can do it on demand at any time inbetween.
What is the status of this problem? As of today, it’s killing my computer speed, and the hard drive is not even attached at the moment!
status = unresolved if you continue to use smartwware. resolved (for me) if i use the chrome web browser. but, i have stopped using smartware altogether and use Genie Timeline - no overhead, 0, zip, nada, none, seamless, accomplishes the same thing except for the security aspects of smartware and you can mix and match catagory/file/folder backup type.
I have a work around for the 100 % processor usage. My memory does not seem to be affected. ( I’m still using WD Backup version 1.3.0.16). It requires the purchase of Norton Utilities (currently running about $30 on Amazon.com). Run Norton utilites when your compute bogs down. Go to Tune up your services and set services to recommended. Processor useage will drop sharply and WD Backup will still run when needed. Unfortunately you may have to do this several times a day so it is not a cure for the problem.
@BBBBBrandon without vss some files may never get backed up as long as they are in use. wdfme/smartware just has some very flawed logic. i use genie timeline to accomplish the same level of backup that smartware (ha!) provides without any of the overhead of smartware. when is wd going to wake up and die right? smartware is seriously flawed as evidenced by the breadth of comments in this thread and many other threads.
No fix. Disabling VSS and restarting WD File Management Engine sent processor useage right back to 100 %. I tried a computer restart, found that much quicker than has been normal, then processor went right back to 100 %.
george_lol wrote: @BBBBBrandon without vss some files may never get backed up as long as they are in use. wdfme/smartware just has some very flawed logic. i use genie timeline to accomplish the same level of backup that smartware (ha!) provides without any of the overhead of smartware. when is wd going to wake up and die right? smartware is seriously flawed as evidenced by the breadth of comments in this thread and many other threads.
I understand that what VSS does, I am asking to test this so we can test our implementation with this component.
I don’t think WD developed this software themselves, so they can’t provide proper technical support.
