WD Smartware and WIndows 2003

Listen, I know WIndows 2003 is not supported now, but I just want to at least say that it used to work when I bought my WD MyBook Elite with the original WD Smartware.  It’s still under warranty and should still work with all operating systems that the original software worked on. 

However, I am still forced to use the original WD Smartware for Windows 2003 and just had to do a RMA and have my hard drive exchanged because the drive was failing with too many bad sectors for the Data Lifegaurd Diagnostics tool to even fix. Now, I’m getting a bug in the WD Smartware that WD came out with a fix in the latest version 1.6.5 where the WD hard drive was not getting recognized by WD Smartware with “No Writable Smartware partition found”.  I am now dead in the water because I bought this external drive for my server that originally worked and now does not which appears to be because of a new firmware of the exchanged hard drive I have received from WD. 

There are many that still use WIndows 2003 because it is the last remaining windows server OS that supports x86 computers.  Honestly, I don’t even think WD Smartware would even work on Windows 2008!  This is an external hard drive meant for backups, which goes hand-in-hand with servers.  It blows my mind.

With this compatibility being only really software related, it would be great if WD is not so selective with their choices of OSes and support a broader base.

Thanks for your time and listening to my frustration,

Ryan

Have you tried reformatting the replacement drive?

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865