Western Digital Backup Software

Western Digital, the long known manufacturer of hard drives released WD SmartWare, a backup software designed to work with some of Western Digital’s external drives and that is intended to be as user friendly as possible.

The main user inteface of WD SmartWare is very appealing, as it shows all your files as gauges and lets you add or remove files and watch the gauges change in size as more files are added or removed. Its user interface really brings backup systems to the “average Joe” as they are intuitive and self explaining.

WD SmartWare starts by scanning your entire hard drive looking for what it calls “Personal files” which excludes system files, applications and temporary files. It will organize all your files by categories (each category is a different file type) such as “movies” or “music” and will start backing them up to the external drive.

As the backup is in progress the gauges start switching colors, giving the user the “feel” that actual transfers are being seen and will also show how much information has been transferred to the external drive.

Backups can be paused if you need to use your computer for something else so that it doesn’t interfere with your regular work and can later be resumed.

Once a full backup has been achieved, it will constantly monitor your activity, so whenever you create a new “personal file” or modify an existing one, it will back it up immediately.

Whenever you need to restore a backed up file, WD SmartWare presents you with a nice interface where you can search files by category, location or use it’s advanced search features to locate it, after it has been located, it can easily be restored to its original location.

An extra layer of security is added by allowing you to set up a password so that it’s impossible to access your external hard drive without that password, this is very useful however it can also be tricky as if that password is lost, there’s no way to recover your files.

Western Digital’s external drives can also be accessed using Windows’ Explorer or Mac’s Finder so that they can be used as regular storage devices, however in order for backups to work properly, backup files shouldn’t be handled by Explorer or Finder.

WD SmartWare is currently available for Windows based PCs and Macs.