Ah so this is why I have a big Lumpen unuseable 80gb partion that couldnt be formatted or deleted. I bought the MYBOOK studio for my PC months ago but only tried to install it on the PC a c ouple of days ago…a nightmare. I went out and bought a seagate extreme which is working great on the PC via ESATA (the very reason I bought the MYBOOK)
Anyway, a couple of day later a new IMAC arrived and seeing as I had the WD and sort of realised this drive was intended for MACs despite the fact WD supply PC install software etc I attached it to the IMAC. Staright away a little blue WD icon appeared meaning there is something in teh drive that cannot be erased and must self install the moment its attached to a mac… even though it was formatted for PC… I see now why I could never once zero out the drive and as well all know unless you can do that the data is never really gone. The drive its self was not recognised by the IMAC until I formatted it which took numerous attempts. I was again trying to zero the drive but it kept failing, So I made a partition and dragged it as far as it would go and managed to format that section for the IMAC. But that 80gb section would not be erased or formatted.
I now have a partiotioned drive which I didnt want, and a useless section of the drive formatted under FAT32. But I think that Fat 32 section isnt doing anything. IF there are any WD hidden files in there they dont seem to be doing anything. But then again, the drive just clicks away a lot even when I turn of Time Machine. It never seems to just sit there and wait for an instruction. This isnt right, and shouldnt be allowed. I havent installed any of the WD software due to my experience on the PC with it and I would recommend no one else does.
But for now its working fine with Time Machine but no matter what I did I couldnt zero the data on this drive on the PC or the IMAC.
Im going to download little snitch and see if theres any WD software trying to access the net
Im much more experienced with PCs and would be able to find out if this drive was up to no good 9as in sending data useage to a marketing dept). But with Macs Im not so knowledegable and software for finding out this type of thing is scarce for Macs. Its as if all Mac sers think their software wont be accessing the net. Hmmmm, I very much doubt that becasue in my experience with PCs almost all software wants to access the net. Im not talking viruses Im talking abot legit software. But with my PC I can tell straight away using various software when something wants to access the net. Ive blocked many applications.
The more and more Macs become popular the more i see the chances that all Mac users are leaving themseleves wide open for snooping. When I just look at the protection that comes with a Mac it seems to me to be very limited although Apple put it across as if your fully protected. Put it this way, withing a minute I had accessed my IMAC from a PC laptop I use with using any passwords. This was using specialist software Im not going to name here (its not illegal), but I had access to everything. Granted when I set up a password on the IMAC I was denied access, but I still had access to the public folder.
What I do with the IMAC is just turn off airport when Im not in the web…always.
