Western Digital's Smartware is unremovable
I have been selling media for some time now which is stored on a hard drive. I was using Western Digital’s Passport serie hard drives because they are small, look nice and i never had problems with them. This week (6 oct 09) i bought another drive. It was the latest model (500 GB, model WDBAAA500AWT-EESN).
When i plugged it in (windows) for the first time two screens popped up. One screen was the “cannot find a driver” -screen. And they other was the “Smartware screen”. And in the windows explorer screen 2! new devices were installed. The hard drive itself and a new CD drive…???. After some digging around i found out that this “Smartware” automatically installs the CD drive everytime! you plug it into your computer. And it is NOT REMOVABLE!!! Shame on you Western Digital 
So since i cant remove this annoying smartware i cannot use the drive… Thanks WD….. Goodbye WD…
So be warned and buy the older models!!!!!
Read some more :
October 7th, 2009 at 13:48h
Thanks for the heads up. So aside from the old WD models…which I still have. What are some alternatives? Like something small & compact like the passport but large enough storage wise…(my hope is the next one I purchase will be 1 TB)
October 7th, 2009 at 13:48h
forgot to check the notify me w// follow up comments box
October 7th, 2009 at 14:27h
I must say i never looked at alternatives because i was satisfied. Why all the change always, for the sake of change??? So now i have to start looking for alternatives. And there are so many brands available. I checked a local site and they sport the following brands : WD, Seagate, Lacie, Freecom, verbatim, etc.
I guess when WD does not remove their Smartware software i will go for Seagate. The following types i found to be alternatives :
Seagate Freeagent GO
Freecom ThoughDrive (more expensive)
Of course there are lots more drives available. I think any drive with a well known brand of harddrive in it (WD, Samsung, Toshiba) will do.
October 8th, 2009 at 14:53h
WD have offered a “solution”, but which i call a difficult temporary work-around. Check it out for yourself. You have to remember that WD wants to target this software to newbies… Image they have to accomplish this workaround!!!
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3779