Last night my mac was running a little slow so I decided to reboot it. When I did something changed all my external harddrive icons from the Apple OSX default to some ridiculous looking icon with some sort of speedometer on the side. I was extremely angry that something changed my icons without any acknowledgement from me not to mention it not only changed for the WD 2TB MyBook I just bought but for all my external mybook drives. I contacted WD customer support and received this answer.
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is [Deleted].
[Deleted]
So from their support standpoint it is an apple issue. I am 99% sure this is a WD issue. WD has changed the default system icon, Apple has not. I do not want to have to reinstall OSX because WD has done something to my machine I think that is rubbish.
Also I know how to change the icons through the get info option. This will not remove the icon. WD has actually made it the default icon for the system. Does anyone know how to change the default system back without reinstalling the whole OS?
I don’t know about Macs. Are you sure it isn’t some malware? In Windows you can right click on the drive in My Computer then properties and change the icon there. There must be something similar for Mac.
I was struggling with this too, researched it heavily, and I’m 100 percent positive about my response and solution.
The reason it changed is due to installed the WD Turbo Driver. Either you installed the standalone WD+Turbo Driver (which comes with “older” WD externals) or you installed the newer Smartware that comes with current WD external drives (the Smartware installer automatically installs the Turbo Driver as well).
If you don’t mind living without the Turbo drivers (most folks who’ve tested it scientifically seem to say the Turbo driver offers little or no significant improvement), then simply run the WD+Turbo Driver installer, choose Uninstall, then power down bot the drive and computer and restart. Should have your factory default icons back, and the turbo drivers have been removed. The ugly icon with the red needle and speedometer is supposed to signify “turbo”.
On newer drives, the WD+Turbo driver is located on the virtual CD in the Extras folder (depedning on your drive, this installer/uninstaller may or may not be listed among t he downloads on WD Support webpage for your model line). On older models, the standalone WD+Turbo driver is typically listed among the downloads for your drive on WD Support page, along with the older Drive Manager software.
If you want to keep using the turbo drivers, the only “solution” I’ve found is the workaround of cutting and pasting custom icons in the drive’s Get Info window.
