Issue after formatting Black2

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
14

Update and solution to the issue:

  1. First of all it appears that when you “install” the HDD with the WD Black2 software, a new partition is added to the disk and the total size is increased by 1TB. The computer then sees the WD Black2 as one drive with one or more SSD partitions and one 1TB HDD partition.

  2. The Sony Vaio S15 recovery disk sees one HDD with some partitions on it. It doesn’t care about the partitions, deletes them first, then installs Win8 with a 5-partition structure (three support partitions of 260MB, 1.44GB and 260MB; one main C: partition with the OS and one hidden 36GB recovery partition). The Sony Vaio S15 recovery disk does not ask on which partition you want to install Win8.

  3. Therefore, if Win8 gets corrupted, because the WD Black2 HDD is not fully compatible with the standby mode of Win8, and you try to refresh the OS, the mess happens.

I solved the problem by deleting all partitions on the WD Black2, creating one 97GB partition (which therefore would be inside the SSD), mounting the WD Black2 into an old Lenovo X200 notebook and installing Vista 64. Then I was finally able to install the WD Black2 software and finally uninstall the HDD, thereby returning the WD Black2 to the factory status.

By the way, the WD Black2 software, even if installed, does not show up in the start menu. To be able to use it to uninstall the HDD, you have to run again the installer. Quite confusing, because when you run an installer you would assume that the software gets installed, but apparently this is not the case with the WD Black2 software.

Suggestion for WD:

a. Nowhere in the user manual (“Quick install guide”) it is mentioned that you need to uninstall the HDD with the WB Black2 software first if you want to refresh the OS. You should make this very clear, otherwise these kind of problems will happen again.

b. More importantly: MAKE THE WD BLACK2 COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS 8!

c. Create and make available a simple tool which allows to reset the WD Black2 to factory status, even if the drive is only connected to the PC as an external USB drive.

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