I have 17 customers for whom I have installed a 1TB Passport SE; all 17 are ANGRY that WDFME has brought their computers to a crawl, making their systems unusable. The systems include XP, Vista, and WIndows 7. All systems have 100% of their updates installed to the current level, including the OS, .NET Framework, Java, Flash, Shockwave; the Passports are running the most recent firmware, and WDSmartware is at the most current level.
I have tested WDSmartware on a new system, running XP Pro and all updates, and WDSmartware consumes 95% of the CPU and 100% of the disk, making the system totally unusable. It does this whether the Passport is plugged in or not; it does it at random times, and the problem lasts for 10 minutes or so.
As near as I can tell, whomever the ■■■■■ was who wrote this program used no common sense to carefully use system resources … the program runs at normal priority and scans every program on the disk … making the system totally unusable.
There are thousands of posts/complaints on the net (google it); WD customers have become so angry that the WD Employee that monitors this forum has actually closed out the subject … that had 11 pages of yelling … stating that WD customers were getting too angry and he was afraid of violence.
If you want this problem fixed, it won’t happen here. Call the support line and demand an escalation to 2nd level support. Then demand to speak to a supervisor. WD isn’t going to fix this problem, which has existed for well over a year, until customers call. If you want to do something else useful, report WD on the “scam” websites (google scam) so that the rest of the world is informed that WD is collecting money and refusing to support their product.
