WD has just lost a devoted customer. I purchased a 3TB MyBook specifically to backup two 1.5TB WD hard drives, each with 48,000 or so files. I needed to backup one of them specifically to convert it from dynamic disk to basic disk.
The included software with the MyBook was “WD Smartware PRO”; it appeared to be intended to do complete backups of disk drives, so I decided (my bad) to use it instead of other means. it was updated to the latest version, 2.4.0 and was then used (via USB2, so it took days) to backup the two full 1.5 TB drives. These drives (fortunately) were NOT my main OS boot disk, but did contain the “My Documents” folder and a number of executable program folders. There is NO clear indication that a proper backup of all files is not occurring in the screens, or a skim of the manuals. The Backup screens shows 48,636 files backed up, total Size 2.11 TB. The Smartware seems to "“double count” some files as both Movies and as Music, as it shows 794.9 GB of Music, but I have virtually none on there. Lots of video, many different formats, as I do a large amount of video camera recording and editing.
The “Backup” screen seemed to show the backup on the MyBook with the same number of files and size, and NO clear indication that anything wasn’t backed up. So I proceeded to change the hard disk configuration, then re-load the backup. After a day and a half of “Restore”, I now find that MANY files are missing. It seems ALL .exe, ALL .dll, and many more files are missing.
There was an “Other” category showing 53 GB of files, which I had assumed included all of these other types of files. After a more thorough reading of the manual, I find: On page 20 under “Display Component-Backup Source Content Gauge” it finally says: “Note that: The System category, shown against a dark gray background, includes all of your operating system files that are not available for a category-type backup, including: system files, program files, applications, working files like .tmp and .log files, and any files that are stored in a Temp folder.”
But on page #1, they say (with no indication that settings need to be changed to do this): “System-level backup—Acronis True Image WD Edition software backs up your files on a system level so that if you ever need to recover your system files, you have them close at hand.” The fact that the default configuration DOES NOT do that is NOT very clear without a complete manual read. It should be clear earlier than on page 20. It later (not till the bottom of page 36 (and it’s item #9 under the “Backing Up Files” subject) does it go into the use of “File Backup” mode to (presumably, I haven’t confirmed it yet) back up ALL files.
Even that isn’t certain, as I had originally found out about this in a Knowledgebase article 3644 (re version1.6, though) which also seems to say it “excludes user folders and files that are exclusively owned by other users”. So can an admin back up all files, or not. It doesn’t seem to say so. So, I will not be trusting WD provided software ever again. And pissed enough to avoid the hardware too, maybe.
I now need to try to relocate hundreds of GPL software items for video conversion and editing that have disappeared from what was supposed to be a complete “backup”. And all my .log files are gone too, it seems, per the lit. And my Temp folder, with current work in it.
