MyBook - to use or not to use the installed software?

I have just purchsed by my first external harddrives - 2 x 500GB MyBook Essential Edition. I intend to use them to store photos only - one as the source from which I will process photos and one as back-up. I intend to import new photos to the internal drive, view them and move keepers to the external drives. For processing I will bring photos onto the internal harddrive then save the finished product to the external drive again (the Essential Edition is USB 2.0 only so this may limit the speed at which PSE 'talks to' the drive).
This should keep my desktop's harddrive as free as possible. (I will create a system back up separately).

Reading reviews about some of the WD products, quite a few posters say that they do not install the WD software (Memeo autoback-up/sync, copy application) as it can be a pain if it starts taking up working resource or overriding otehr software (this seems particularly so with passport which I may also get). So I have refused the option to intall the WD software and doing everything manually, using Windows Search funtion to copy/move photos between drives.

Does anyone find that the WD software has particular advantages? Is is all about convenience, or have you chosen to ignore it as well? (I am currently not taking zillions of pictures so any time saving may well be not significant if it is only about convenience).

By the way, I am an almost complete techno-muppet when it comes to computers as you can probably guess from the questions and the fear (!) of having to resolve any software conflicts is quite daunting!

Any other advice on backing up photos etc?

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Mike

Edited to clarify my questions