I am running Windows 7 on an old Toshiba laptop (Satellite A105-S4211 that I’ve updated the hardware on). Awhile back I installed a WD MyBook 3TB external drive for backups. It seemed to be working. There would be flurries of CPU consumption, but they would quiet down. I’ve never had to restore, so I’m taking it on faith that I’d be able to restore something if I needed.
From time to time it tells me that a software update is available and I install it. I did that today to WD SmartWare 2.3.0. Seemingly a bad idea.
Since the update the Windows Resource Monitor tells me that the process WDBackupEngine.exe is using in the neighborhood of 50% of my CPU. It also tells me that the services WDBackup and WDDriveService are together using in the neighborhood of 50% CPU. Backup is using 90+% of my CPU? Really?!?
When I start up WD SmartWare to see what it’s doing, it doesn’t tell me much. It says “59.46 GB of 59.46 GB copied”. That sounds like it should be done.
So, why is it still using over 90% of my CPU? I disconnect the drive and reboot and my idling machine indicates it’s using 0-5% CPU. I plug the drive back in and I’m back to 90+% CPU.
Resource Monitor also tells me that WDBackupEngine.exe is doing disk I/O, reads and writes, but not a lot … less than 1% active time.
What’s it doing? How can I get my idle CPU back?
Thanks.
Like others suggested here, I reinstalled WD SmartWare 2.3.0. Now it seems to be behaving normally.
I booted the PC with the disk drive disconnected. I went into Control Panel >> Uninstall a program, scrolled down and Uninstalled in turn WD Quick View, WD SmartWare, and WD SmartWare Installer. After the Uninstalls were complete I downloaded WD_SmartWare_Installer_2.3.0.20.zip, used WinZip to open it and ran WD SmartWare Installer.exe.
Once the installation was complete, I started WD SmartWare, plugged in the WD MyBook 3TB external drive, unlocked it, and performed a backup. When the backup completed, WD SmartWare reported the backup was complete and the PC returned to idle. Yay!