WD Sync: Is a “sync” program. One syncs specific content (folders/files) between two locations (computer ↔ My Cloud) so both locations have the same files. Delete the file from one location, it is deleted, typically immediately ,from the other.
Smartware: Is a “backup” program. It backups the data from one’s computer to a location on the My Cloud and saves that backup to a single backup file on the My Cloud. If you delete a file from the computer you can recover it from the backup assuming Smartware has not performed a new backup of the computer files.
Syncing and Backing up are done for different reasons. They are not the same despite some thinking they perform the same action.
If one uses the forum search feature they’ll see this is a question which has been asked in the past on more than one occasion. For example:
Generally one uses file syncing to keep the same small amounts of files in two locations. Generally one uses a backup to backup a large amount of data (or the entire computer hard drive) to another location so one can recover that large amount of data if it is deleted or the computer’s hard drive crashes.
