I recently bought the same drive 30 Aug 2011 and found that the drive seemed to log itself out after 10GB. Time Machine failed. So having read the forum posts, I updated the firmware and installed the new SmartWare v1.3.3.8.
Am using a MacBook running Leopard 10.5.8 and yes, I have swiched off the sleep timer. Tried different ports.
After update, I still found that when using the password protection, the drive caused TM to fail or just crawl with a very very slow rate of data transfer. I then registered the device as a preparation to start asking “what to do” and was surprised to see the data transfer rate suddenly pick up … sadly that was for only 28 GB. Then it was back to a snail’s pace. Drive/computer was not moved so seems this is a software issue. I also tried removing the SmartWare altogether - no change.
I asked WD Customer Help who took several business days to answer but they offered only the firmware/software updates as a solution.
Having wasted several valuable days to get this premium product to work, it seems clear that WD should not be selling this as “Mac compatible”. Hope to be able to get a refund !
