*update* 8 oct 09
Western Digital offered a “solution”, see link below, to their Smartware software. It involves a lot of steps, certainly not for a newbie… Image your mother doing this??
Come on WD! Sell hard drives without your annoying software……

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
• http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3779

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