WD Smartware Leaves a Lot to be Desired

I use a WD My Passport because of its small size and especially because of its native hardware encryption. I frequently travel with the drive so I have no consequential concern if it is lost or stolen. Although I also have Seagate Backup Plus drives I do not use them when away from home because they cannot be encrypted.

 I would liked to have sent WD some direct feedback but dissappointingly there is no real or convenient provison to send an email with product feedback. Nevertheless I hope someone in WD sees my comments below and forwards them for consideration.

I do not like the WD Smartware and think it could be easily improved. First, it could be much more friendly primarily because it provides no straightforward method of turning off scheduled and continuous backups and just making on demand snapshot backups. Second, a backup can only be started by specifying a single drive - multiple internal drives have to be each manually started. Third, the progress information now provided does not really provide anything useful.

I only use the drive to backup both my main (C) SSD with the Op system and an internal (D) HDD used for bulk storage. My backups are always made on demand, never via a schedule or continuously. They are essentialy a snapshot when I feel it necessary to make a new backup. I also always backup both internal drives at the same time. Although WD Smartware works, it could be much more user friendly for making on demand snapshots of two or more drives and it would be nice if the display provided more useful information about the backup currently being made.

Specifically:

-Although I always back up both the C: and D: drives, I can only specify one drive at a time to backup so the backup of the second drive has to be manually started after the first completes. This is annoying and inconvenient because the backups are typically started at the end of the day and it it is necessary for someone, during the night, to start the backup of the second drive. Seagate allows specifying all recognized drives when using their Backup Plus drives so there is no reason the Smartware software also can’t do this. Also, since there is not always someone to start the second drive during the night, it is typically a two day job to make a simple backup of both drives.

-Making a snapshot backup can be brute forced but it is not straight forward or convenient because Smartware short sightedly only is written to make either continuous or scheduled backups. There is no third option, like Seagate has, providing a “Snapshot” button and the ability to simply turn off both continuous and scheduled backups.

-The information displayed when a backup is in progress is worthless and confusing. The only thing that could be useful provided is the number of files written. Without knowing the total number to be written this statistic has little meaning. The data provied under “Files Not Backed Up” never seems to even come close to being accurate and I am not even sure what it is trying to tell me. I would like to see the following:

–Accurate progress indication such as total number of files (or GB) to be backed up, the number of files (or GB) already backed up, and the number of files (or GB) remaining.

–Estimated time to completion.

–Average data transfer rate (useful for many reasons like gauging how well the USB port is working, etc.).

Other similar software provides this information in an understandable format so there is no reason the WD cannot do this also.

Although the Passport is a great product but we purchased and invariably use the Seagate products (when encryption is not needed) because their software, although not great, is much more friendly and useful to use.

1 Like

I totally agree with your comment that progress information is very lacking in this application.

I also agree with your list of enhancements. I would add the ability to have a detailed window with a scrolling list of the files being actually backed up, plus the ability to generate a log or file that shows all files that were copied to the back up drive.

This is in my opinion a very hot enhancement requests. All backup software I came across have this feature.