WD Smartware & new WD 6TB

Yesterday I purchased a new 6TB WD at BestBuy that was on sale.

I love WD hard drives (external, internal and portable).

I purchased the WD My Book 6 TB as an upgrade to my 2 TB.

I do photography and 3D rendering/modeling. I shot my photos in the RAW format.

On my primary computer used for photos and 3D I have WD Smartware Pro installed. It came with a new WD 3TB portbable drive I purchased a few months ago. It works flawlessly. I have my source backups set to specific folders I’ve selected (ie: D:\PHOTOS, E:\3D RENDERS, G:\PAINTINGS, etc)

Presently I have WD Smartware doing a continuous file backup to my WD 5TB, Seagate 8 TB and WD 2 TB.

However when I swapped the WD 2TB for the new WD 6TB WD Smartware does not recognize the new 6TB.

On the new 6TB there is an app named WD Backup however when I go to run it I am informed that it is not compatible with my WD Smartware backups. Which is not good. So I cancel the install.

I install WD Backup onto a second computer I have. And install WD Backup onto it. The 2nd computer already has two external 4TB WDs installed. I play with the WD Backup but it does not have the continuous file backup option. Only hourly, daily & monthly.

I really like the continuous backup function, there have been times when I’ve just created a new file only to make a change or inadvertently delete it and WD Smartware has come to the rescue. This ability appears to be lacking in WD Backup.

I see no advantage in WD Backup over WD Smartware. And because WD Smartware Pro does not support newer WD drives but does support competing new hard drives I’m perplexed if I should continue to purchase WD externals.

Reasons to stay with WD Smartware

  1. I have a large WD Smartware backup spanning over 3 external hard drives WD 6TB, W 2TB and Seagate 8 TB

  2. Continuous file backup

  3. Very user friendly and has proven to work for me

  4. Maintains multiple copies of files and retains deleted files.

  5. WD Backup does not recognize my existing WD Smartware backups

  6. WD Backup does not work with non WD drives.

So what are my options? Why would WD design new software that is not compatible with an older backup? What can WDC do customers like me who have been loyal over the years.

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The new WD My Book and WD My Passport hard drives are factory-formatted as exFAT for cross-platform compatibility between Windows and Mac. However, this file system not supported by WD SmartWare Pro.

Your hard drive should work with WD SmartWare Pro (Not the regular version) after you format it to NTFS.

Thanks. I did reformat to NTFS and it did not resolve the issue. Windows 10 sees the drive fine but WD Smartware Pro does not…

Any other ideas or thoughts on this issue?