WD smartware versus Time Machine ? which is best/easiest/quicker?

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi all, what a fantastic piece of kit the MyBookLive is. the more i find out about it, the more questions i have, that i cant always find the answers to !.

I have an Apple MacBookPro which comes with Time Machine

I have the option of using the WD backup software called Smartware.

Does anyone know which is best, easiest to use or the quickest ?.

My first Wired back up with Time Machine seems to be estimated at 15 hours for about 300gb !!! is that normal

thanks.

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Smartware is windows only, so Time Machine is your only option.

Time Machine backups (especially the first one) are slow. That doesn’t sound too bad to me. Just let it run overnight.

Are you on a gigiabit network? (meaning does your router support Gigabit)?

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My current Router has not got a Gigabit LAN socket, on monday i was going out to purchase a router that has !, which in itself should make a significant difference, should it not ?

I shall definitely use Time Machine LOL. (and perhaps super dooper on my old time machine mypassport usb drive)

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Can i jump into this conversation?

 I have a MacBook Pro and, last summer, was talked into buying a Time Capsule so I could work on my photos (I use Lighgtroom) anywhere in the  house and have the stuff saved to an external hard drive.  The backup occurs over an internal network in my house, I guess.  Something went wrong, and the backup stopped, so I would connect the TC with my MBP with a cable, not the USB but the one that looks like what you use with a telephone. The symbol looks like this:

 <–>.  It wouuldn’t back up.  A friend said that the TC was looking for the network, and refused to recognize the hardwire connection since it  had been set up for the network.  I have several thousand photos that I have not backed up to an external hard drive as a consequence.  And when I talk with people or look at discussions or forums, I can’t find a specific  solution to my specific problem and don’t want to make matters worse. But I need to backup my photos.

 So I got a 3TB WD My Book Essential, formatted it for my Mac as directed, and backed up about 300 GB of photos overnight.  It looks like the entire MBP got backed up as well because it took up almost 400GB on the WD.  

Some questions, then:

How can I see the window which shows what the content of the WD is, by categories, i.e., photos, documents?  This was visible when it was backing up. I can’t find it now and have looked the best I know how.

How can I be sure that the backup is using Time Machine?  Doess that happen automatically as a result of my formatting the WD for Mac?

I want to transfer my 300 GB of photos from my internal HD on my MCB to the Time Capsule and to the WlD to free up space on the internal HD, otherwise I will soon run out of room on the 500 GB  internal drive. How do I do that?

Thanks for any help anyone can give.