I’ve just formatted the drive and forgot to backup the software (WD SmartWare?), can’t find it on WD website since the product page tells there is no software available for the model. Meanwhile the drive itself seem working just fine, except I’ve noticed the drive doesn’t stop spinning even after I do safe eject in USB devices list in Windows 7. Is that a normal behaviour? Safe disconnect in SmartWare tool does however stop the drive but the software simply crashes as soon as as it’s popup message fades out. I guess I’d prefer not to use SmartWare, especially if it can’t even disconnect device without a crash (three different computers all have the same result). I really don’t like extra unnecessary software on my PC, so would it be alright just to disconnect it without all that SmartWare stuff?
Hi there!
If Windows tells you that it is safe to disconnect it then just wait a few seconds and do it.
On the other hand, just in case you ever need Smartware ever again then you can download it from any other drive because the Smartware program itself is the same.
But still, even if the software is to crash then it should not do any harm if it happens when you eject it, because the software needs the drive…
If you’re interested on restoring the contents that you lost with your drive formatting, they can be downloaded from here.
My Passport Drive Contents: Windows (465MB)
http://download.wdc.com/smartware/WDSmartWare_PP4R2_1_4_1_2.zip
My Passport Drive Contents: Mac (180MB)
http://download.wdc.com/smartware/WDSmartWare_Mac_Disk_Image_PP4R2_1_3_0_18.dmg
