Wow! An update to WDSmartWare already… to specifically address the complaints many of us had in the “17” release. Excellent… I’m downloading it as we speak. Haven’t even begun to use it yet.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank WD for the fine support, both on the forum, and via e-mail. A week or two ago, I did open a trouble ticket, and although at the time we were really never to solve the problem, I was at least very impressed to get continued responses back from WD… usually within 1 day. So thanks to everyone at WD including Alvaro G, and Paul B, who actually took the time to telephone me the other day, about my issues.
There are many companies that don’t take the time to respond to complaints, much less offer software upgrades fairly quickly, in response to complaints like ours. So, hats off to WD’s support!
So far, it’s working good! I have not selected “run in the background”. The software takes up 100% of the CPU (or as much as it can), when I’m not doing anything, but appears to relinquish CPU as soon as its needed by something else. This is exactly how it should work. This new version appears to “play nice” with other applications, and is not bogging down the computer. The difference is quite noticable. Good job!
So far, it’s working good! I have not selected “run in the background”. The software takes up 100% of the CPU (or as much as it can), when I’m not doing anything, but appears to relinquish CPU as soon as its needed by something else. This is exactly how it should work. This new version appears to “play nice” with other applications, and is not bogging down the computer. The difference is quite noticable. Good job!
We will use as much CPU as possible. To simply things: We ask Windows for idle CPU, and Windows “loans” it to us until it is needed back. The issue was never really CPU usage, but memory usage. When people would look at task manager, the first thing that is seen is the CPU usage percentage.
And so you think it was the amount of memory being used before, that cause it to affect the rest of the system, or did it take more time to swap out? I don’t remember noticing the memory usage before.
What Task Manager sees now is:
WDFME - 62,000
WDDMStatus - 11,508
WDDMService - 9,300
WDDMRulesEngine - 17,300
One question… Does the software delete the “etilqs_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” files it creates?
It is supposed to through SQLite. We are looking into this issue right now. Deleting your temp files in Windows will also delete these, which is part of the reason we store them there.
It is supposed to through SQLite. We are looking into this issue right now. Deleting your temp files in Windows will also delete these, which is part of the reason we store them there.
Yes, it might be worth looking at that. I will also keep an eye on it here. Right before downloading the new version, I checked windows/temp, and there were over 100 of those file (taking up 1.4 Gb). Many of them were created/last modified as far back as March of this year.
I suppose we can’t expect the software to delete files if for instance the PC crashes, but I would hope that it deletes these on a normal shutdown, or when the file(s) are no longer needed.
Also, for what its worth, I don’t think the WIndows “Disk cleanup” utility removes things from \windows\temp. At least it didn’t here when I tried it. I think it only deletes things in the “documents and settings” temporary folder(s). If that’s true, it might be nice if these files were placed somewhere, where disk cleanup can delete them.
I have upgraded to 1.5.1.6, and still have the same problem: even when my WD Passport disconected, the WDFME.EXE file, keeps running, from 60 to 100% processor usage. Why does it keep running if i’m no using it? The WD Smartware keeps running in background, is that why this file keeps running?
I have the same issue, this is really getting frustrating. I removed WD Smartware and switched to Windows Backup now. I am just too tired of waiting for WD to fix their software
I have upgraded to 1.5.1.6, and still have the same problem: even when my WD Passport disconected, the WDFME.EXE file, keeps running, from 60 to 100% processor usage. Why does it keep running if i’m no using it? The WD Smartware keeps running in background, is that why this file keeps running?
What other software do you have running? The only reason I can think of why that would occur is if something is constantly changing files on your computer. The way SmartWare works is it updates your files based on when they were last changed - if new files are created or changes are constantly being made to your files it may be “flagging” them to be backed up when your Passport is reconnected. Thats the way its supposed to work.
Since I have a laptop and use it when mobile, the high cpu usage is a battery drain. The cpu sharing is fine for a desktop, but not for going mobile. I will not be able to use this kind of continuous backup solution.
1.5.1.6 shows “Backup accomplished successfully” in the Backup Tab. After a while my 6.9GB of Music on both the Data to be backed up and data backed up display seems to disappear and then shows 671MB. If I stop backup and restart it after a while I am back to 6.9GB and this continues ad infinitum.
Does anybody else have any ideas about this. Please dont tell me to contact Tech SUPPORT as I have been waiting for a reply for some time now.
The numbers on the screen…they are all unrelated and sensless to me. The user interface needs tome maturing.
I use backup with winxp and it says 39.5gb of 45gb on the top row. What 45gb is that? I dont know what it is!
I have maybe 200 folders I want to backup…there is no place on file transfer backup mode for me to see what files it is working on. Wouldnt it be better of your designers put that info in the diaplay. Which files is it backing up right now?
What if it couldnt backup a file? Where is your notice that the soiftware had a problem with saving some files.
The numbers on the far right of the display next to my destination drive…they have not changed much…other numbers change upt there seems to bea n update problem there.
HOW DO I KNOW WHAT FILES HAVE BEEN COPIED? iTS TAKEN ME OVER 4 DAYS TO TRANSFER 200GIGS.
I could manually transfer that amount in a couple hours manually. How come this takes days? I leave it running all night with nothing else open or running and yet I get maybe 10 or 20 gigs a nite. HOW SLOW IS THIS?
Common guys…make this software better quickly. It makes your reputation look tarnished…like you dont care enough to put people on making intelligent software. This backup software is not rocket science…it is hurting your reputation with me.
This software has been around for going on 2 years. I think they’ve done about all they can do to make this software the best they can. It is as good as it is going to get. I always just copy and paste my main file folders to the external drive. It is the only way I know that I am getting my data copied across. Or, you can use Windows backup. It isn’t perfect either, but at least it won’t run all the time, and you can schedule the backup.
I know that this software has been around for a while and it does not provide a “full backup” as advertised i.e. it does not back up the os. However up until 1.5.1.6 it did its continuous backup ok as far as I can tell, in that I have never had to do a retrieve so who knows. After I upgraded to 1.5.1.6 the content guages went crazy,sometimes it shows full backup accomplished with 9.8GB in both to be and backed up. At other times they show partial backup accomplished with much lower but disparate values in both guages but the really strange one is when both guages show 2.8GB to be and backed up and full backup accomplished. After a while this goes back to full backup accomplished then cycles through the above stages interminably. This does not give me confidence that if I had to do a retrieve then I would get all my stuff back.
Some people are reporting RAM and CPU hogging but, possibly because my CPU is kept busy 24/7. I have not noticed that.
I am in the hands of the remote support guys but after a clean install I still have the same problems so I am not fixed as yet.
This speaks poorly for a hard drive company that wants its users to have a successful experience with its backup products.
I can remember the older software that only backed up categories and not specific files and folders…My mother wants to just back up pictures…for me…I need to have control over specific folders and specific files that need constant backup. It seems like it took them years to make a more mature software product for serious users and not just grandmothers and newbies.
Im really displeased with its slowness, the numbers I read are totally horrible and totally meaningless, 5 gigs of what constantly changing number on the right? How come my total number of files doesnt update in days and days of leaving it on all night? Why has someone in software engineering not figured out in two years to show me WHAT files it is backing up? How come I cant use ALL my external drives as sources for backup (only 3 of my 6 drives show up in the source window). The background software that is left running after I close the application continue to HOG 45 to 98% of my CPU cycles for hours after I shut down backup. I have to manually task manager them off to get my machine speed back.
I would love to be able to talk to a serious product manager at WD and explain how their premier software to make me have confidence in their ability to backup my files…is an immature, poorly thought out, malfunctioning, non serviced piece of software that is runing their reputation with me.
I bought their drive to make my software safe and reliably backed up as I was working. Didnt want to forget to manually backup every night.
Can it be such a resource hog to have some software people sort this software out… so WD does not get the reputation of being a backup drive for grandmothers?
I guess you can tell im less than impressed with their feeble commitment to its customers with this Backup software product.
Software that keep creating new “temp files” in the \windows\temp folder, and never deletes these huge files, can’t possibly be “as good as they can make it”. That’s a bug. Plain and simple. I’m still not convinced they need to even use these temp disk files.
The “numbers” and disk usage data this software generates, is wrong. That’s not “as good as it can get”. That’s a bug.
Ok, I understand software that has to look at every file you’ve asked it to keep track of, will consume some CPU. After all, this sotware has to check to see what files have been created/deleted in your selected folder(s), and for existing files, it needs to look at the “last modified time” to see whether or not that file needs to be backed up again. But Windows Explorer “search” function can parse thru my entire disk with much less impact. Heck, even Norton’s full system scan doesn’t consume resources as much as this backup software. This can’t possibly be “as good as they can make it”.
