SmartWare is DUMBWARE

I did a full backup of my C; drive and “SmartWare” missed ALL of my itunes music files. These files are nowhere to be located - not under music/other/movies/etc. These files were in the itunes default folder - C:Documents and Settings/All Users/Shared Documents/My Music/iTunes. How stupid can WD be for this programming error???

Also the “Smartware” software does not backup ANY .exe files, even if it is not a system file and is in the My Documents folder as far as I can see. Thus the WD drives are not a viable backup option using “Smartware”.  Many of us have .exe files from software we downloaded and need to save. This needs to be corrected by WD.

I agree, this software is a waist of time.

I have a 320G My Passport Essential portable HD.

->I can not back up directories i want, this includes network dir’s - so where is the “backup” functionality???

->this was purchased under the knowledge that files saved onto the HD are stored encrypted (on the fly encryption) however this is not the case, just the limited backups(the only ones that this software allows you to do!) are encrypted.

WD - you have a lot of work to do if you expect people to be happy with the rubbish software (of which i now do not use). However if you can incorporate this functionality, you would sell far more units (I would be recommending them around my work). until then there are better drives on the market for the same price.

Regards,

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When I ran my backup, this file existed:

C:\Documents and Settings\pasco\My Documents\personal\forsale\OM2 Set\PL Filter\IMG_3598.jpg

Since I accidentally deleted it, I want to restore it.

I chose “Restore” and then “Pictures” and “some files” and opened folders down through forsale but there were no

subfolders below that. Notably there was no folder “OM2 Set” at all (and thus no subfolders like “PL Filter” either).

I’m wondering, were those folders just to deep in the hierarchy for SmartWare to consider worth backing up?

Update:

I just figured out why Smartware didn’t back up my folder “OM2 Set” or any of its subfolders:  They were created at a time when SmartWare was not running, and Smartware only backs up files and folders that it notices being created.  I had turned off SmartWare because it consumes a huge amount of CPU overhead by running all the time.

I’m going back to XCOPY to do my backups.  With its /d option, XCOPY backs up new files and files newer than their counterparts already existing on the backup drive.  But unlike SmartWare, it doesn’t need to be running at the time the files are created to become aware of them.

If you have Windows 7, try the " backup and restore" is easy.

101% agreed with you. My notebooks has lots of those program files in vb extension…and guess what!!! This extension is not supported for backup!!!  So, dropped an email to WD support…not much help, just said the extension not supported blah…blah… Asked them whether can manually changed the rules in the SmartWare’s configuration file to include the extension…came the answer that the changes will corrupt the backup data. What!!! Now…i really ‘pissed off’ with the product…And this will be my first and last time of buying a WD product!!

If you have Windows 7 or vista, try the " backup and restore" is easy.

After reading some of the comments on the WD Community site I think I’ve got the wrong product for my needs. I thought that the Passport 500 I just purchased would be a good and easy replacement for my older Accommodate external backup unit. However, everything I’ve read indicates that the units software is very problematic and that the unit has problems backing up iTunes files. I have about 60 GB of music and 20GB of pictures in addition to all of my Documents that I want to back up. It seems like it’s going to be a problem. How difficult would it be to use the Passport as a large flash drive and forget about the software all together? I would like to be able to move my music to other computers that do not have the WD software and also don’t want to be prompted to load the software every time I want to access a file on the drive after I plug it in.

I just tried to use the drive for the first time only to have it represent my entire hard drive as a System Category  and therefore its not able to back up any file at all. In the detailed area all the categories show as 0 content. Any idea’s on what is going on?

…got to agree with all the comments made above!  All I wanted was a secure place for important files and data.  The so called ‘smart ware’ just gets in the way!!!  It seems to miss a lot of files and does not replicate the file trees in MS Explore faithfully.  Finding out what’s on your Passport is a pain as you have to run ‘retrieve’ which can take a long time.  MS Explore shows a very scarey lack of data if you try and look at it there.

My confidence in my Passport Essential is very low and I shall be looking for a more user friendly, reliable and accessible back up and data storage method in the future!

I’m going to see if I can get my money back!

hey man I think u can recover ur files using this software…no matter its in gb…

http://www.piriform.com/recuva  hope this will help u…

That if he stopped using the disk before it get rewrite or rewrite the sector where the files are.

Just as a general comment: Western Digital has not yet answered my e-mail to them requesting help or answers to my question about why the drive shows all of my data as being in the System category. It has now been a week!  There customer service is non existent. And what’s up with only 30 days of support from the initial call to them? What is a customer supposed to do after that?

My prior back up was from Acomdata. I called them after three years and they gave me all the help I needed. They never gave me a hard time or asked me for a credit card before they would talk. Now that is great customer service and support. I will go on their web site and buy another drive from them. At least I know they will help me if there is a problem. WD doesn’t seem to care about its customers, just about selling product. Well, I’ll return their product and spend my  money with a competitor.