I made the mistake of buying the Passport Essential 1TB drive.
I actually expected it to have about 1TB of useable storage space. Silly me! I have 600GB of space, and 400GB locked off in the ‘Virtual CD’.
WD “Tech Support” (as they call it) is giving me a completely unacceptable set of answers. My favorite is that the “Smartware” only takes 250MB of space.
Since this thing is advertised as a 1TB drive, and it clearly isn’t, has anyone gone to the Better Business Bureau to complain about false and misleading advertising?
Based on the comments that I should have read (all over the internets) before buying this little fraud, I’d think that is the only way WD will get the message and stop doing this abusive business practice.
BTW - does anyone have recommendations for similar drives (without the bloatware or “CD” lockdown) from other vendors?
You need to consider that it’s most likely that you have a defective drive. The VCD with the SmartWare will be about 400 MB’s, and the 1 TB drive will show up as 931 GB’s. That’s due to the difference between the decimal and binary formats. Drives are built in decimal sizes. Operating systems format in binary sizes. A good article to look at is in WD’s Knowledge Base (link is below). Also, before you complain to the BBB about this, just know that all this has been court tested quite a while back.
No, that’s not what I am seeing on my computer. I’ve worked with computer hardware for over 25 years, and I know the difference between digital and binary.
I see 400GB for “SmartDrive” as a “VirtualCD”, and 600GB open for use.
I emailed with customer service, and they said that the maximum I could ever see is 930GB, but I would never see it because I can’t get rid of the “VirtualCD” so I had bettter get used to having 600 GB. I’ll forward the email if you really think it matters. (930GB is the amount i am expecting)
If the BBB doesn’t accept it as a advertizing issue, then I will change it to a customer service issue.
Either way WD has just about lost me as a customer. I posted this to all of my IT buddies on Facebook and Twitter to see if they have any suggestions.
