This question deals in part with SmartWare and in part with the VCD. I’ve put the question into the FAQ and am waiting for a response. I’ve noticed that several other community members have asked similar question but not received complete responses, particularly concerning the removal of the VCD entirely from the Passport drive. So if anyone here has any insights… I am trying to determine whether I have any need to install SmartWare. I’ve concluded I do not as I do not intend to use the external drive for automatic backups etc. I back-up the external drive to a NAS RAID. I would also like to determine the implications of removing the VCD, recovering the disk space for storage, and preventing the drive from creating the VCD drive (thereby using up a drive assignment). Does removal of the VCD void the warranty? If not, how does one go about removing the VCD, not merely “temporarily disabling” the VCD. All I really want is an external drive with ALL of its capacity available for storage of files that I choose to put on the drive. I use the drive on multiple computers so that I do not have to physically transfer the files/documents that I am currently working on and using. I would also like to stop the drive from prompting me to install the software every time I connect the USB. The interface seems nice and simple and I do appreciate the information displayed in the system tray on current drive status. However, the software does seem to create considerable overhead. In addition I do not want to run the automatic backup and there appears to be no way of disabling this feature short of not installing the software. I have uninstalled the software, but would like to physically remove the “traces” of the program from my computer and cannot find a listing of the program modules, etc., that were installed.
Unfortunately removing the WD Smartware from the drive is not possible yet, this application or software is embeded to the drive, but if you would like to disable it so it doesn’t pops up automatically or so it doesn’t show as a Virtual CD-Rom then I would recommend you to check the knowledge-base article below, it has some information that should at least help you disable the WD Smartware. :robotwink:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3835&p_created=1256946237&p
When I try this it gives me an error message (when it’s supposed to be displaying the drive’s serial number) saying it can’t update the firmware.
I am trying to use this drive on a computer with many drives mapped to it. The "smart"ware drive takes up the only remaining drive slot. The difficulty I’ve had in trying to remove all this automatic software would really make me think twice about buying another WD product.
How can I get rid of the virtual CD??
