Solved Western Digital (WDFME.exe) Solution?

[copiman]

After some Googling of WDFME.exe I found that this is a Western Digital software pertaining to backups. When the service is running, it can consume an enormous amount of CPU and RAM. Lots of complaints. For me it was a lot. Actually enough to stall Macrium when creating an image. Sad to say I did not find any solutions to the WDFME issue other than stopping the service, which is not a permanent solution. It seems if you want to do backups and have a WD hard drive, you just have to put up with it. This also causes slow performance when using the computer.

Has anyone heard of a solution to this other than going Seagate? I'm still going to search but I thought someone here may have already been down this road.

 

[mjf]

Treat your HDD as a piece of hardware with inbuilt firmware. Don't use their backup software since there are better and more robust options. Better backup options IMO are:
1) a standard hard drive in a third party enclosure
2) a standard hard drive in a docking station

I am now adopting option 2). Unless the HDD itself is defective I can simply connect to a PC sata port and get my data. Even if defective I have a better chance of data recovery.

 

[copiman]

So it is software that comes with external WD hard drives that you use to back up with?

If removed it won't effect the WD hdd in the PC?

 

[copiman]

I have searched some more about this. The (WDFME.exe) is from the Western Digital Smartware that is used to backup the PC to a Western Digital external HDD. Most people have uninstalled it due to it is a resource hog and causes problems with the normal operation of the PC. I have chosen to uninstall it and use a third party backup solution since WD does not have a solution.

 

[mjf]

I think that was a good decision. This forum has discussed a number of backup options. Check out the tutorial section.