I mentioned my experiences with 1.6.4 on an XP computer and why I reverted to 1.6.2 on page 6 of this string http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Software/Software-Update-WD-SmartWare-Version-1-6-4-for-Windows-10-10-12/m-p/507928#M5832
I now have a new Core i5 laptop with Windows 8 and have updated My Passport Essential to firmware 1.019. I used the drive with MS Easy Transfer to copy my files across to the new computer. This worked extremely well with a couple of exceptions (see below).
I installed SmartWare 1.6.4 on the new computer which seems to work although it still has the problems identified on earlier 1.6.x versions.
As Slash and other users have noted, SmartWare stops Windows timing out to Sleep mode, although it does go to Sleep mode if I close the lid. I presume SmartWare disables Sleep mode to ensure that backup is not interrupted. I had a problem with timer controlled Sleep mode interrupting the installation/updating of another program so I’m not unhappy with this feature but it should be mentioned in the Release Notes.
I’ve found two issues that I hadn’t encountered before:
First: my main Outlook PST file was renamed automatically to “Outlook (1).pst” by Windows when I copied the files over. I set SmartWare to keep 2 versions of the back up files instead of the default 5 versions but found that it kept adding more new versions of the backup and reached 12 versions (and was still increasing). My Archive PST file only had 2 backup versions, so the type of file does not seem to have been the issue. I renamed the file to “Outlook.pst” and it now saves correctly. It appears the “ (1)” in the filename that caused the problem which I found also existed with 1.6.2.
Second: when I reconnected the My Passport drive to my old XP computer it started categorising all my files again. These were virtually fully backed up before I transferred to the new computer and none of the existing backups have been replaced or replicated – it simply seems to be checking them all which will take many hours. Perhaps this is because I updated the firmware on the WD drive.
