Western Digital's My Book Studio External HD SUCKS.

I hate these things. These 2TB HD's are becoming more and more the choice of clients it seems since there's a dearth of External FireWire hard drives. At a store today I looked out of curiosity and all I saw for 2TB FireWire Externals was this thing and a Seagate (I think).

The model number is WDBAAJ0020HSL-NESN. Don't buy these.

The My Book Studio has a "Virtual CD" which is persistent. It contains software Western Digital thinks you think you need and when you eject this little non-writable volume it just remounts itself. It's not even shown in the partition of the drive.



What's the Virtual CD?

From their site:

A small portion of drive space on your new My Passport or My Book hard drive has been used to create a Virtual CD (VCD). The VCD contains the WD SmartWare installation software, the encryption and password protection application, User Manuals, and other resource files. The VCD looks like an actual CD volume and appears on the screen each time you connect your WD drive to the computer.

The VCD is necessary if you wish to install WD SmartWare or if you want to use the encryption and password protection features on the drive.

If you don't wish to run WD SmartWare or use the security features, you can disable the VCD following the steps below. The VCD can be re-enabled by running the VCD manager.

WD does provide a simple two step way to remove the Virtual CD (or at least hide it, it's still there lurking) from your sidebar and desktop:

Failure to perform these precautions may cause data corruption/loss and/or drive failure.

That's encouraging. Onto the simple two step process:

STEP 1: Firmware Update: Release 1.032 (11/19/09)

Disconnect all other external drives from the computer except for the My Book or My Passport hard drive you want to update.

Ensure that the My Book or My Passport drive is connected to a USB port on your computer.
Download Firmware Updater for Mac.
Unzip the Firmware Updater and double click WD Essential and Elite Firmware Updater for Mac.
Verify the attached drive's serial number located on the back of the drive.
Select the drive displayed.
Click Update Firmware.
Drag both My Book Drive and WD SmartWare Virtual CD icons to Trash bin.
Click OK.
Click Accept the End User's License Agreement (EULA).
Click Yes.
Once the updater is finished, click Exit.
Turn off the drive - For My Passport, disconnect the USB cable. For My Book disconnect both USB and power cables.
Wait 10 seconds. Reconnect the USB/power cables.
STEP 2: Download and run the VCD Manager

Download VCD Manager VirtualCDManager_v1003.zip for Mac to your desktop.
Unzip the utility and double click to open.
Click Continue to disable the VCD.
Click Accept the End User's License Agreement (EULA).
Click Drive to configure and select your drive.
Verify desired Virtual CD setting.
Once the utility has found your drive, click Configure Drive.
Once the Virtual CD setting is finished, click Exit.
Power cycle the drive - For My Passport, disconnect the USB cable. For My Book disconnect both USB and power cables.
Wait 10 seconds. Reconnect the USB/power cables.
Verify that the VCD no longer appears.

See? Simple. Only Two steps.

If you want to change the VCD from mounting and auto-mounting and re-mounting you have to install their software AND update the firmware on the drive. Ridiculous. If you want to change the eInk display from reading "VIDEOS 09" and display any capacity info you must install their software. If you want to adjust just about ANYTHING on these things you must install their software.

Oh yeah, did I mention that as of this post the firmware updater to remove (hide) the Virtual CD only works with the "Essential" and "Elite" drives and NOT the "Studio" ones?

I hate these things.

Here's what you see when you first mount it:



Oh yeah, did I mention that the one a client handed me appears to have been dropped......BEFORE it was packaged? There's a dent in the plastic on the rear top right (as you face the front) of the drive and the plastic was knocked out of it's snapped-into position. It clicked back audibly when I was looking the case over. The HD was sealed in a bag, the whole mess was still shrink wrapped inside the box. The cardboard box is undamaged as best I can tell.

For more reviews just look these things up on Amazon.

After installing the WD software just to change the text on the label of the drive (which I did on a media server Mac that has nothing mission critical on it and is easy to restore) it brought me to the "WD SmartWare" app and shows this deeply helpful information:



That's 114.3 GBs of run-of-the-mill Final Cut project files, saves, images, music, exports, footage...

Helpful.

The one handy thing?



Too bad not all of WD's drives can do this.

Hard Drives Keep Spining Down

Western Digital MyBook external drives are notorious for having a mind of their own (firmware) which spins them down seemingly every other minute (actually every 10mins). During a 60min export a friend called and asked me why it was failing repeatedly seemingly in the same location. Could the files be corrupted somehow? Asking about his set up I knew the problem when he mentioned there were two WD external drives connected to the system.

There are a few things to you can do to stop this.

01) Boot into Windows and alter their firmware with Western Digital's own tools. Good luck with this.
02) Pay $10 for No Spin. Which I haven't tried.
03) Install the FREE Keep Drive Spinning but under Snow Leopard it'll require Rosetta.
04) Download the FREE Disksomnia, which I've mentioned before, but in order to download it you must provide your email address (they email you a link to download it...evil) which opens you up to spam, their newsletters and other junk. Also, the Disksomnia installers requires your admin password which I never like. Pacifist shows that all it installs is the app and then sets it as a log-in item.

I don't like log-in items and just need the app. Yay for pacifist.



05) Mac OS X Hints has a Bash Script to keep the drives spinning. Your luck may vary with this.

This has become such a bother for me that I'm no longer using or accepting WD External drives for editing from clients.

Some suggestions I've received are essentially variations on the same idea: Put a media file on the drive and keep it playing in a loop. Small .mov, .mp3, etc...