Since the SmartWare software contains a lot of junky stuff that I definitely find of no use, I’ve made few tests and removed few unnecessary things from the default installation. This is a short summary that will perhaps be helpfull to you:
Which functions of SmartWare I want?
- Free space LED/eInk indicator - all those fancy blinkenlichten in the “Elite” series of Passport and MyBook , roarr
- Fast way to unlock the encrypted drive
Which functions I don’t care about?
- Backup - I use commandline ‘unison’ tool for differential folder syncing (run by tasksched or batches)
- Blinky tray icon - got plenty of those already
What to do then?
There are several apps that are starting up with the system, and some of them are totally uncecessary.
Services: Start > Run > Services.msc
- “WD File Management Engine” - disable - don’t know what it does, but ain’t missing it anyways
- “WD File Management Shadow Engine” - disable - same as above
- “WDDMService” - keep enabled - it makes the blinkenlichten work correctly
Startup folder: Start Menu > Programs > Startup
- “WDDMStatus.lnk” - remove - it launches the tray icon which is a WDDMService frontend, and nothing more
How to unlock the encrypted device without tray icon?
First, you need a script. Here are few lines of VBS code. It jumps from drive to drive to find your VCD and launch “unlock.exe”:
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")Set shell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")For driveLetter = 68 to 90 If ( fso.FileExists( Chr(driveLetter)+":\Unlock.exe" ) ) Then shell.Run Chr(driveLetter)+":\Unlock.exe", 1, true Exit For End IfNext
Save it as “whateveryouwish.vbs” in a folder you’ll remember and then bind it to some keyboard shortcut (I use Win+O). Works 100x faster than “click tray icon, then click…”, basically in an instant
To bind the script to the keyboard you can either app like HotKeyz or some keyboard-specific app (like Logitech Setpoint, now that’s a piece of software WDC should learn from!!!)
Now everything works smoothly (and fast) and WD SmartWare tops at 4MB RAM usage
Hope you’ll find it useful