I always avoid software that comes bundled with hardware. Regardless of the manufacturer, it is notoriously unreliable.
BUT… after buying my 10th WD external drive, I relented and installed this SmartWare 1.6.0 garbage. I should have gone with my instinct, and continued to simply delete the StupidWare package from the drive, and pretend it was never there. I like the drives, but the box and the foam they come packed in are worth more than the software.
One of the main features that goaded me into trying it out was the ability to set it to backup only when the computer is idle. Unfortunately, that feature isn’t there – _ even though the manual says it is! _ When I’m trying to use my computer, I can’t afford to have _ WDBackupEngine and WDRulesEngine collectively hogging nearly 90% of my CPU _. And that’s even without the SmartWare interface open! That is totally unacceptable! It shouldn’t need to use that much of the CPU even if the computer _ is _ otherwise idle!
To make it more irritating, I have found that some files and/or folders have been arbitrarily skipped. They are not listed in the SmartWare interface as being skipped, but they are not present anywhere in the backup. Again, _ this is unacceptable! _
It seems to me that if you’re going to tout your software as being ideal - or even simply suitable - to be used with your hardware, then it doggone well better be!
I’ll be going back to my old method of scheduling a backup using Microsoft’s – yes, _ Microsoft’s _ – SyncToy. It’s old, and sometimes it creates duplicate files (I think it does that when you modify a file that’s in the backup), but it’s never skipped a file on me, and best of all, it’s FREE!
