REVIEW SmartWare Firmware My Book Studio model WDBAAJ0010HSL

I have been reading all the reviews, now I am NOT sure I want to purchase a WD My Book Studio 1TB Firewire 800/400. After doing the research I finally found one that should work. BUT I have a G5 I-Mac with OSX 4.11 (Tiger) . It does not have Leopard (which contains Time Machine software) and I think that could be a problem too. it sounds like I would have to use WD Smartware Firmware and that is not getting the best reviews. I have never done a back-up on my mac which is now almost 5 years old. I also have a lot of photos in iphoto and use photoshop.  After speaking with the people at the Apple store, they recommended this model, but now I’m scared to purchase it. Please let me know what you suggest for an older iMac with Tiger.

My personal opinion, based on twenty years in the computer graphics industry, is that I will never purchase any WD products again. This whole saga speaks of a customer hostile attitude which I can well do without.

There are plenty of other manufacturers out there who provide external hard drives which allow you to back up your data how you like, and to format and partition your disk how you like. (LaCie have been producing hard drives for years and I have used them without an issue).

Firstly, forcing the user to have to mount an undeletable partition is rude and bad business practice. From a technical point of view, I don’t even have words to describe the fact that the partition on the Studio version can’t even be disabled - let alone removed completely (not that it should have even been there in the first place). I have been getting constant errors as my system struggles to deal with this rogue partition.

Secondly, the WD Smartware software is awful IMO. Even if the partition didn’t steal space from the hard disk and force users to mount this software every time they want to use the disk, I wouldn’t use this software. 

All that is needed to back up a Mac is an external hard disk with a Firewire or USB2 connection. You don’t need time machine to back up an older Mac, you can simply drag and drop the files across. If you want to automate the process, there are free products like Carbon Copy Cloner - which can do incremental timed backups. Or other paid for products like SuperDuper. versiontracker.com should have both of these.

But, whatever you do, if you haven’t backed up the Mac for five years, I would strongly suggest doing so ASAP. :neutral_face:

Thank you for your quick reply! I am convinced now, and will research the LaCie HD. Thank you Thank you. Do you have one you could recommend for my OS X.4.11 with a 400 Firewire? (i could also use the USB, but I have read that Firewire is faster). The Carbon Copy Cloner sounds like something to look into in the future. I agree, right NOW I need to do a back up soon. The Mac locks up occasionnally now and I’m getting nervous.  I just want somehting easy. I’m on the artist end here and don’t like all the “Techy” ■■■■.

Thanks again!

Same problem here. Futhermore, I had to format the drive because it began to work pretty slowly and some files were not accesible(luckyly is not being used for backup purposes). After formating problems seems to have disappeared. Last chance after sending it back to the store.

My first WD and quite dissapointing.

I had the same experience,with a  resulting MONTH of emails to the support site which is still ongoing.

Fortunately for me I bought three WD Studio drives before the Stupidware VCD fiasco.

Unfortunately for me I just bought two Essential drives with the retarded VCD attached…

They hang for a minute or two or three every time I try to open a folder, eject or whatever.

After many years of buying WD drives I am now a Seagate user… with no problems.

I just got my Studio 1TB today and didn’t realize ahead of time I wouldn’t have the option to use SuperDuper instead of the built in WD software. Can you say when the firmware update will be available? I’ve had good experiences with WD so far using other drives and don’t want to return this one, but based on the many, many negative reviews I’ve read of the software I also don’t want to install WD’s software on my system.

Thanks.

Hi,

I’ve got the exact same issue.

It’s been the second time I buy a WD My Book. The first time was 5 years ago and it was simply make crash my mac and I’ve lost my data.

Then I’ve decided to buy only Lacie HDs and I spent 5 years without any issue. It was simply doing what I need: an external Hard Drive.

This month, at the Apple Store of Montpellier a saler recommended me the WD MyBook Studio. According to him it was a perfect solution for Mac and TimeMachine.

Here are what’s going wrong here:

  • Can’t remove WD SmartWare

  • Corrupted data with Time Machine

  • No Firmeware update

  • WD support website: wrong links toward firmware update (wrong model)

  • Apple stores sale this model

  • Apple saler tells you it’s good for TimeMachine

The only good point: As WD does not seems to react to this issue, many people are getting disappointed by them. And the more we are, the more WD is getting a bad reputation. And maybe, with a bad enough reputation they won’t sale anymore HD (at least software!).

I have to chime in again 'cause I’m so angry.

After so many years WD has become an inept and irresponsible company.

I own 14 external WD drives and a handful of internal drives, but I will never buy another one.

For people that want a drive they can trust I would recommend Seagate. I have a bunch of Seagate drives (and Lacie) as well, and just bought two new ones last week.

Took them out of the box… mounted them… reformatted to Mac OS and started copying my files without a problem. I’m sure that like the other ones that I have for years they will continue to be reliable

Can’t do that with WD drives. Why? "Cause WD isn’t as smart as they like to label themselves… as evidenced by their drives and software which are now made by Mickey Mouse or Santa’s elves.

After a week and many hours of hassling with WD support they sent me an email telling me to return my drives.

At least they figured out that the drives don’t work… I wonder if they’ll figure out how to fix them.

Probably not…

I just picked up a 1 GB MyBook Studio to use with my Macbook Pro and I’m not kicking myself for not having just gotten an external enclosure and separate drive.

Assuming I can even get the drive stay mounted using FW800, I’ve always got that useless virtual drive sitting on my desktop.

When is the Studio drive getting the firmware update that every other drive seems to have already?

How many months does it take to undo the damage that WD has done with this useless, intrusive garbage?

I’m VERY upset that the tech I spoke with didn’t tell me there is NO Manager for the 1 TB My Book Studio Drive for the Macintosh. He sent me links to Manager software and Firmware upgrades and had me trying and trying and trying again with software that wasn’t for my drive. Also, I’m upset that WD forces this software on it’s customers like it or not. I have no need for it and have to give up 237.5 mb of my hard drive space without any option for not keeping it. I’ve had many external HD’s that shipped with software I wasn’t compelled to keep.  You should do 2 things. FIRST inform your tech support there is no hope of ridding the drive of WD Software. AND you should be UPFRONT and honest in your packaging so that your customers will understand BEFORE purchase NOT AFTER… to avoid the trouble of returning the drive as many claim they are doing on the various forums around the internet.

I totally agree with all previous posts. I always use WD harddisks as backup disks for my servers. I buy the most expensive and complete drive MyBook Studio and I get the stupid VCD CD drive WITHOUT the ability to remove it!

Even the cheap Essential drives can do this… And then they still take up 600 MB from my drive which I can’t use.

WD, I you want to keep your customers give them FLEXIBILITY. If we don’t want something we should be able to remove it and reclaim the space you wasted on my drive…

Where’s my firmware update??

Thanks, Tony Krijnen.

Yes, the WD My Book Studio product with the Smartware partition is completely unacceptable.

The unremovable Smartware partition simply makes it not of saleable quality as far as I’m concerned and I have returned my Studio drives to the shop I bought them from.

It seems that WD are simply ignoring this issue and pressing ahead with complete disregard for their customers. Which is fine by me. My company periodically spends  thousands on external hard drives. That’s a few dollars that WD are not going to get over the next few years.

They don’t seem to care about the bad reputation they are getting and have some kind of stubborn commitment to pressing ahead. Good riddance, I say.

I updated 4 My Book Studio (2TB each) and 1 My Passport Studio (500GB) using the last firmware and SmartWare updates, with success, in both PC and Mac. The only issue I had is that 2 of the My Book Studio in PC was keeping saying drive was busy (probably some software in my PC trying to read/write on them), but when I plugged them to my Mac updated successfully. The other 2 drives were updated on in PC (with success) and the other one directly in Mac.

It’s important to mention that this is not supposed to delete the Virtual CD, but to hide it. I successfully got all of them hidden using WD SmartWare (“not that smart”).

It was a late solution, but better than never.

Hello Everyone,

This My Book Studio Firmware updater for Mac is for My Passport Studio and My Book studio.

*****It is silver looking case with both USB and Firewire connections *****

Please carefully follow the instruction on the web page as it will lead you.

Use the USB connection only during the firmware updating.

Disable or remove security or password protection before doing the firmware update. 

Be sure to wait for the firmware updater to finish.

Restart the computer and power cycle the WD My Passport  Studio or My Book Studio drive after firmware update is finish.

If you have WD external drive with black case use this link instead 

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/wdsmartwareupdate/st ep1.asp?id=wdfMB_Elite&os=mac

If you are using windowsPC, please just select windows version from the web page.

From any links above by click on the HOME button at the bottom right of the page, then choose the Windows.

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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.

OZZLAND:

“Granted when I set up a password on the IMAC I was denied access, but I still had access to the public folder.”

Really … you got access when a password wasn’t set but you were denied when it was set… I’m shocked and suprised.

And you had access to the PUBLIC folder. . . .  another shocker.

The world should hear of the revelations immediatley. …  sigh

I can recommend this product for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_foil

It’s brilliant for making hats out off so they can’t scan your brain from satellites :wink:

thanarath:

Great post. Thank you.

I was holding off buying one of these because of the software issues. Finally found your post. Problem solved.

Have some rep :slight_smile:

i just discovered that it is possible to get the drive space back occupied by dumbware, at least under osx. just download the trial version of paragon ntfs from paragon, reformat the drive with windows nt. It worked great.