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 :

• http://superuser.com/questions/44318/how-do-i-remove-a-mybooks-wd-smartware-virtual-cd-from-my-desktop
• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10351853

Then it is a good time to increase your storage space of your laptop (or other computer). We get more and more and more data and we want to have it. But our hard disk space is limited unfortunately. So if you have a USB port to spare then you can buy a USB harddisk.

Western Digital is releasing some interesting new models with lots of space. These USB (2.0) hard disk do not need a power supply and are nice and small. They fit in your pocket and are easy to take on travelling. So if you are a travelling preacher then go for it :

• Product page at Western Digital, Passport Elite 320 GB
• A review of the Passport Elite at notebookreview.com
• Another review at laptopmag.com
• Buy this hard disk at newegg.com

In a month or so this passport will be available in 500 GB. Current models have a storage space of 80, 120, 160, 200, 250 or 320 GB. I would recommend buying the biggest possible if you have the money.

If you need to upgrade your internal laptop hard disk then you can read my post with some guidelines on how to do this.

• Guide to upgrading your internal laptop hard disk