My Book 3TB power button

Muyfa666 · October 15, 2015, 1:15am

Hi ppl.

I bought a WD My Book Essential 3TB USB 3.0 to cover all by backups for the near future.

One thing I always require on a external HDD is a power button to have to unit plugged in, but turned off when I so desire.

It looked like WD offered my this, but as you all may know, the power button needs SmartWare which is a major resource hog. Me not like, but what to do? Anyone found any way around SmartWare? I malied the support and asked if there was a firmware update in the works, but tech guy said there wasn’t. He would forward my request to the dev team thou…

Is there something to be done in the meantime? I guess not, but asking is free.

Nesvic · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

nope, unfortunately you will need Smartware to use that feature.

fed_up · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

I’m sorry, but you should be able to turn the power on and off WITHOUT software. And why in the world does an externsal hard drive need a bios?

I am running into that same issue. And even though I have loaded that bloatware (which acts more like spyware or a virus slowing the PC down) WD calls SmartWare, the drive lights stay on when the PC is shut off and when the PC is running the drive light goes out. I think it’s more DumbWare than SmartWare. I find I have to keep the stupid drive unplugged to solve all the issues I have with the drive. Not a very user friendly product, more of a user frustation product. I am VERY DISAPPOINTED with WD. I never thought in my life that any company could put a product out more frustrating and poorly thought out than Microsoft, but WD has managed to do so.

PepeManager · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

Hi, I have just bougth My Book and I didn’t install the software, and I found out that first I stop the disk with the task bar icon, then I press the harddisk hardware button (which is in the back) for 5 seconds, it will shut down, and keep in that way even if I restart, and pressing again the button with a fast click is enough to start the disk again. I hope I am not forcing anything, but so far it works perfectly. If I have the disk on while restarting the PC, it restarts together.

Regards