Smartware? Immediate product return

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I have bought over a dozen passport drives in the last two or three years.  This week, I bought three more.

3 x 750GB Essential drives

I have just found out about this smartware nonsense.  Software that I can’t remove?  A partition that always auto-mounts and then re-mounts when I eject it?  The risk of being locked out by an unspecified password if I eject it?

I want nothing to do with it.  I’m arranging to send them back to my supplier immediately.  One is open, two are sealed, I hope that my blameless supplier can get money back from WD for this faulty product.

Shame on you WD.  The passport was an excellent product.  You have destroyed it.

Andrew

2

This has been noted and has been passed along.

3

I feel you brother. This is my last WD purchase.

4

i bought a 2T My Book Studio today, to use as an external boot drive for my Mac using the Firewire port. The virtual drive that auto-mounts, prevents my mac from seeing it as a bootable drive. There is a firmware  and software update that allows this “crapware” to be disabled on other drives, but unfortunately the firmware update is not yet available for the drive I’ve just bought, rendering it unfit for the purpose I specified at the Apple store I bought it from. It looks like I’m going to have to return it. :(