After reading a bit here and there, It seems I made the mistake to keep running SmartWare rather than remove this programme…
With that being said: SmartWare is taking atrocious ammounts of time to react to anything. I can’t change the tabs. The drive seems to be working, as the white light is blinking. I have previously managed to exit the programme through task manager, and then remove the drive, but, as I still needed to do a backup of my files, restarted the computer, and connected the drive again.
Now, SmartWare takes even more time to react - I am not able to press the “stop backup” button (even though it is not greyed out), and while I can force-close the programme through the task bar, or the taskmanager, I can’t “safely eject” the drive. I am guessing that removing the cable will damage the drive.
I am not saying Smartware is okay. But you could still try two things if you haven’t done that already. Try to uninstall Smartware and install latest version of Smartware. Keep the drive disconnected at this time. If not successful, try uninstalling antivirus program such as Norton.
If all above unsuccessful, uninstall Smartware and use some other backup software if you need one. Or you can try MS SyncToy for a change.
…after reinstalling Smartware with the latest version, it answers more quickly…
…but now, for some reason, the previous data that were on the drive have has been poured into the “additionnal files” categories, leading to yet another copy of my data, this time arranged under the usual categories (pictures, movies, documents, etc.). Which means my drive is now two thirds full rather than 35%…
…after reinstalling Smartware with the latest version, it answers more quickly…
…but now, for some reason, the previous data that were on the drive have has been poured into the “additionnal files” categories, leading to yet another copy of my data, this time arranged under the usual categories (pictures, movies, documents, etc.). Which means my drive is now two thirds full rather than 35%…
What now???
If you created a backup using the old SmartWare, and then installed the newest version of SmartWare, the new version of SmartWare will attempt to convert the old backup to the new. To do that it will copy and convert. However, it’s supposed to delete the old files. Sometimes, it doesn’t.
If you used both old and new versions of SmartWare, there may be two folders on the drive.
Old SmartWare version names the folder “WD_SmartWare”.
New SmartWare versions name the folder “WD SmartWare.swstor”.
If both are there, you can delete the old version, “WD_SmartWare,” and see if that frees up the space that should be there.
