I have many WD externals that I’ve used with earlier MacBook Pro laptop and MacPro work station. VERY happy with them. Recently purchased a new small MacBook Pro and purchased My Passport Essential and My Book Studio–both come with SmartWare Software. I’ve done my best to research it, but am completely baffled: I only want to copy select files onto My Passport Essential. Can I just delete the SmartWare and use it as intended? My My Book Studio is intended as full backup for new laptop. As soon as I plugged it in, it asked it I wanted Time Machine to use it for back-up. Of course. So it seemed to back it up–but not all files as Time Machine is supposed to. The My Book Studio is made specifically for Macs so Time Machine should be sufficient. Do I delete the SmartWare? I don’t understand its purpose. Would greatly appreciate input from any Mac users.
I ended up deleting the software since I use Time Machine for backups. I think the only thing it’ll reallly do is enable the Visual Backup feature. If that’t not important, then you probably can just delete it. Also, Time Machine allows me to add files to my WD external manually, if I need to.
Smartware is the awful software that WD insist on bundling with their new products. It is completely unncesseray and most people seem to ignore it and use their own backup software, or simply copy their files to it manually., However, you may have trouble deleting the software if you have the model with the firmware virtual disk though.
See some of the other threads in this forum. Lot of unhappy customers.
