[Andrew Rowlands]

Follow up to the thread from last year of NicoleB's data loss problem.

The WD ext. drives with 'Smartware' seem to be a black hole for your data should anything go wrong. Please buy an alternative drive - without any 'useful' software attached or ready to install from it.

The most recent failure I've come across is this one, there have been others in between.

My view: the WD Smartware (auto-installing on first connect) effectively encrypts and compresses data as it's written, if anything goes t*t's up, all data is lost.

On the above link: I think the password reference here is indicative of the electronics in the drive being shot, nothing to do with the absence or otherwise of a real password.

If you have one of these drives, replace it with a vanilla ext. drive (or two!), only power up/connect them for data transfer/backup, store them safely where they can't be damaged/stolen/knocked over.

[Andrew Rowlands]

A little bump here as the latest find is titled Drive Encryption on WD Passport Drives Corrupts JPEGs.

[Howard_Hopkinso]

Thanks for the info mate.

[pummkin]

I use WD & to make it readable on all platforms, I format the entire drive & partition it to 3 sections while disabling the proprietary app. It's a security feature that WD puts in to make sure your data is only accessed by you with a password. Just format it to FAT32 & bypass this app the moment you get the disk first before you store any data.