Bye Bye WD

This is my last post to the forum.

For some days I tried to contribute to this forum mainly by expressing to WD the problems arising from the use of a permanent VCD partition and the need to remove it (if this is possible). Until today I have not got a straight answer, if this is even technically possible (maybe by a firmware update?) or if it is just a decision of WD to never remove it. I never asked for the removal of Smartware as this is easily removable.

You might ask “Why VCD is  a problem ?”

VCD is a permanent partition and being the 1st partition of the drive in some cases it makes the drive unreadable. For example if you try to use it as a PVR disk to an MPEG4 decoder it is unusable, as these machines  read only the 1st partition of a disk. It may also create other problems as it needs special drivers (SES etc.).

You may note that forum subjects with most “hits” are the ones having titles like “Remove the VCD from my drive”, “Driver error message:WD SES Drive USB”, “WD External Hard Drive Not recognized in my computer” etc.

Finally I would like to answer (point to point)  WD Bill_s post  replying to me under the subject “WD_Anybody hearing?”

  1. “Sure all drives used to be just blank volumes, but things change”

Of course things change but don’t you think that customers should have been warned about these changes before they bought your product ?

  1. “Who are you to define what is a bad business practice?  Just because you found out that it wouldn’t work for your needs, you are upset.”

I am just a plain customer expressing his opinion, that not clearly informing your customers about the “special features” of your drive is a bad business practice. I have read a lot of other statements in this forum from other plain customers expressing similar objections. As you know several “plain” customers constitute the general public to which you sell your products. I would think that you respect their opinion and remarks about your product.

  1. “That I can understand, but WD made the choice to build this drive.  Whether it fits into your scheme of things, or not, doesn’t make it our fault.”

I never said you should make the drive the way I want it (just inform us about the “special” features you decided to give to your  drive so to freely decide if it fits our requirements).

  1. “And it certainly doesn’t make the drive illegal, nor our practice of choosing how we want to build a product, illegal.”

Of course it is not illegal to design your product the way you want it. Maybe its illegal not to give the right and full information of the features and restraints to the customers, before they decide to buy your product.

  1. “Moreover, there is no misinformation about the drive.  If you would have taken one minute to search on these drives, you would have run right into this forum.  We’ve hid nothing about these drives on this forum.”

Of course there is no misinformation. The problem is THE LACK OF CRUCIAL INFORMATION.

And from when on it is A MUST to search the web before you buy a product. All the crucial and vital information should be written upon the package of such a product. You usually join a forum to solve your problems or to help others (usually after you bought and used the product) .

Finally I would like you to note that my intension was just to help me and others with similar problems and to convince WD to launch a new firmware removing the VCD partition (if this is technically possible). I did not expect half answers and ironic or insulting comments. All of us have jobs too and our time is valuable.

Certainly this is not my first external drive nor it will be the last. But probably it is the last WD product that I will own.

Thank you for your time.

I really hope WD proves to be in the right side

“VCD is a permanent partition and being the 1st partition of the drive in some cases it makes the drive unreadable. For example if you try to use it as a PVR disk to an MPEG4 decoder it is unusable, as these machines  read only the 1st partition of a disk.”


The box states the unit is for Windows XP, Vista and 7 & Mac OSX 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6, it does not mention PVRs at all. It was YOUR MISTAKE to ASSUME the unit will work even if it is not advertised for that purpose. Computers with the SUPPORTED operating systems listed CAN READ multiple partitions, so again you are wrong. The MyBook Essential is advertised for COMPUTER BACKUP, if you wanted to use a PVR, you should have at least asked about alternatives for your needs, you would have been suggested a MyBook AV or a WD Elements and you would not be whining right now.

“1.  Of course things change but don’t you think that customers should have been warned about these changes before they bought your product ?”


The unit has MORE THAN A YEAR in the market, it is NOT a secret. It is clearly explained in the in the Web site and in the user manual (Which you can also see in there even if you don’t have the product), it’s not WD’s fault that you did not do any research for 10 minutes. Again, you would have picked another WD drive with NO VCD, as there are plenty of those.

“2.  I am just a plain customer expressing his opinion, that not clearly informing your customers about the “special features” of your drive is a bad business practice. I have read a lot of other statements in this forum from other plain customers expressing similar objections. As you know several “plain” customers constitute the general public to which you sell your products. I would think that you respect their opinion and remarks about your product.”


Then again, the vast majority of smart buyers (READ: People who INVESTIGATE before buying) are happy with WD products, as they decided to go for the one they trully need, rather than going “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe” on a random product on a store and then being mad it didn’t work. ^^

“3.  I never said you should make the drive the way I want it (just inform us about the “special” features you decided to give to your  drive so to freely decide if it fits our requirements).”


WD informed you in the place you can find all information requiered by law: Thier Web site; which also has the user manual. The box is just to identify the unit and even if it didn’t, it mentions COMPATIBILITY. Again and again, you decided to skip that and make yourself a blind promise about it.

“4.Of course it is not illegal to design your product the way you want it. Maybe its illegal not to give the right and full information of the features and restraints to the customers, before they decide to buy your product.”


Read answer #3 . So again… You fail. ^^

"5. Of course there is no misinformation. The problem is THE LACK OF CRUCIAL INFORMATION.

And from when on it is A MUST to search the web before you buy a product. All the crucial and vital information should be written upon the package of such a product. You usually join a forum to solve your problems or to help others (usually after you bought and used the product) ."


The “crucial” information is where it needs: ON A PUBLIC DOMAIN THAT EVERYONE WILLING TO MAKE A SMART PURCHASE CAN ACCESS. The box is not big enough to hold the “crucial” information you so badly want. If it had all of the info listed. the box would be 3 times bigger and the printing would be size 6. The definition of “crucial” is rather RELATIVE, something crucial to me is not something crucial to you and so on. A market study is done to research what the VAST MAJORItY considers as “crucial”, as was donde with previous WD drives. You don’t fall in the list? 51 is still a higher number than 49, live with it. When I go to a store and I see a product I know what it is, I don’t have to expect for the product to tell me what it is since I AM THE ONE RESPONSABLE for what I buy. No one else has to be responsable for me. ^^

So please, stop whining, you decided to buy the wrong drive just because you liked the box. Don’t blame WD because you expected the drive to do what you wanted even if it not advertised that way.

VCDs are industry standard now, even HP has them on the Simplesave drives. Get used to it ot read the USER MANUAL before you cry like a candyless baby to take back the unit 10 minutes from purchase.

Sayonara :wink:

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I will not comment on your “polite” remarks.

As you seem to be a big fun of the Internet please just Google the words “Problem VCD WD” and find out how many customers are frustrated, angered etc by all those “smart” and permanent (not freely removable) features.

So many people !  And for all of them “It’s their fault?”

It’s not their fault when they take it back and decide to change the unit for another one that does not have the feature, as there are others even from the same company.

Instead. you decide to keep it and expect a fix because you will not choose another one. It is the one  you took and there are no more options because you want the one you have to do what you want, even if not advertised for that purpose, right? :)

Had you call WD before or just ASKED you would have another WD drive (With NO VCD) and you’d be happy now, rather than frustrated. 

The WD AV line (MyBook and Passport) is advertised for what you wanted to do (They even come FAT32, like a thumb drive), but you took an Essential drive (Advertised for backup on the box) under the blind assumption that “It’s just a another hard drive, they all do the same”.

IMO, it’s unfair to buy something by MY mistake and take it on the manufacturer. However, if they advertise something and it does not do what -IS- advertised, then we have an issue. But the Essential drives fulfill what they state they do: They work as computer backup drives with drive encryption, which is the job of the VCD to make the encryption real. As long as that is done, they don’t have to do something else.

Another product will fulfill another function, as a DREAM PRODUCT THAT DOES IT ALL is in IMO does not excel at something specific; I’d rather have a product engineered to acomplish maximum performance on a SET task. Then buy another one for another situation DESIGNED AND ADVERTISED for that situation.

:slight_smile:

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akala  Im Wondering If you Still Have more Comments ? Hahaha  , Dude Last Guy Killed you!!!

So We have Here

akala  With 2 Points and

The ThePizzaMatrix With ‘‘5’’ , So You are Loosing For 3 , So  i Don’t Know If u Have Something else to Say lol
Because i DONT hahaahahaha

:slight_smile: :)…

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Unfortunately, I also will be leaving WD, and moving to hard drives that don’t CORRUPT my system with stuff I DO NOT WANT. Upon learning WD, in it’s infinite wisdom REFUSES TO RESPOND TO MULTITUDES OF CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS, I figured what the heck, I’ve spent the money, I’ll keep the drive. Until today. On a Ubuntu system, as I tried to create a USB stick, WD, in its infinite wisdom, decided to put their TOTALLY AND UTTERLY UNWANTED material onto the USB, corrupting the USB with stuff I DO NOT WANT, DID NOT ASK FOR, AND REFUSE TO CONTINUE BOTHERING WITH. So, I will be dumping my hard earned money, in the form of a CRAPWARE drive, into the trash. GOODBYE WD, AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO YOUR CRAPWARE!!!

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Again, if you didn’t want it, why did you buy something that had it in the first place?

I don’t like mayonnaise.  I simply don’t buy things with mayo on them.  What I don’t do is buy them, eat them, and then complain that it wasn’t what I wanted and that I hated it.

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Indeed!

RoofingGuy said “I don’t like mayonnaise.  I simply don’t buy things with mayo on them.  What I don’t do is buy them, eat them, and then complain that it wasn’t what I wanted and that I hated it.”


If you really want to describe the situation with the VCD partition I would  instead use the lyrics from the Eagle’s song Hotel California.

     " …We are prisoners of our own device …You can check-out anytime you want but you can never leave…"

That is what is happening with the VCD. You can hide it but you can never get rid of it !

Here we go again with the VCD -_-u

Dude, just get a product without a VCD, all WD drives that DO NOT mention Smartware are free of what you define as a problem because you won’t accept that the product you took on a blind mistake will not do what you want.

You want a solution for a problem that does not exist.

Just get another drive (WD or not) and move on with your life. Otherwise, accept what you got the wrong unit and move on as well.

Adios.

akala wrote:

if you try to use it as a PVR disk to an MPEG4 decoder it is unusable

Of course it is.  It was never designed for that.  That’s what the “DVR Expander” line of drives from WD is for.  Or alternately, any of the bare, “plain ol’ drives”.

If I buy a SmartCar, it’s unusable for 4x4 off-roading.  Is that Mercedes’ fault or mine?

The VCD, as explained by WD, is necessary to have the drive be lockable and encrypted.  Any WD drive that’s lockable will necessarily have the VCD on it.

The question still remains… when you got home and found your PVR didn’t like the VCD, why didn’t you take it back to the store and exchange it for one (from any manufacturer) that would work with your PVR?

I can answer on his name :wink:

He did not take it back because the unit he took has to do what he wants and will not accept that it does not :frowning:

It has to do it because it belongs to him and he does not care that the unit is not advertised, designed or even suggested to do what he wants, he just wants the unit he took to do it, as he won’t accept that the feature belongs to another product.

Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong :slight_smile:

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The answer to the only  really good question   “The question still remains… when you got home and found your PVR didn’t like the VCD, why didn’t you take it back to the store and exchange it for one (from any manufacturer) that would work with your PVR?” , is as follows:

  •      I had previously bought another almost identical WD which had no VCD or Smartware. So I used the old one as a PVR disk and the new one for my computers.

  •   I already had a lot of other WD disks with no problem until today. I respected WD and its customer service. Also being the problem of just a firmware update, I really thought that it was a matter of time for WD to release such a firmware. Do not forget that WD already released a firmware update to only Hide the VCD (after the complaints of so many customers). 

  •   Please also take  into account that in some places it is very difficult to return a product if the box is  opened.

I think that it is very logical to ask  both of my almost identical WD  disks to be FREE for EVERY USE. PLEASE JUST GOOGLE to find out how many other customers have similar problems and frustration. ITS JUST A FIRMWARE UPDATE AFTER ALL ! (and only for those that want it or need it).

Finally as I am tired of talking about “Pizzas and mayonnaise etc” and not about the drive itself and why a new release of the firmware is out of question “in the near future”…

I will leave you so that you can freely give credits and points one to another for your answers.

Goodbye.

Thank you for your time.

I wish you the best.

Take care!! Next time do your homework :smiley:

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Well Now We have ThePizzaMatrix = 10 Points and Akala 2 So we have a Winner!!!

So Congratulations ThePizzaMatrix  you have Won this Battle…

Kudos for u!

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Naaaaah, RoofingGuy is the one who has been dealing with that guy for a while now, I just joined the fray =)

You pizza monster people ain’t serious about your technology, no…? Anyway, great jokes and nice buddy act. I enjoyed throughout the whole post except the “points” stuff. Not much competitive myself, sorry. :robotsurprised:

But you fail to recognize the real subtext: ANOTHER SMARTBUYER IS NOT GOING TO BUY AGAIN A WD DRIVE.

As I did.  And that`s is the shame on the whole thing. Even if the box is 50 times bigger than it needs to print all the CRUCIAL INFORMATION.

Who cares now? People: stop eating the WD pizzazz. WD: stop spilling the beans.

Ditto. Nice buddy act. Will not buy again.

MacVaio_Worst Digital Robot :robotwink:

Well, the fact still remains that everybody still has the capability to do this.

Whether they choose to, or not, is still up to them, but ultimately they’re responsible for the choices they make, be the choices good or bad; be the choices ill-informed or not.

All I can do is advise people that do get a VCD external home only to find it’s not right for them, to take it back and get a drive that is right for them.  I can’t make them get a suitable drive in the first place.

First of all, sorry for my english, I’m from Spain.

Well. It’s the first time that i write into a forum to share my frustation with a computer hardware. The first and I hope that the last one.

That’s not a question of who has more points or pizzas or whatever stuffs. This is a serious forum where A LOT OF people has serveral problems with the same product.

In my case, i can bet on everyone that is here to solve the problem that this hardware has caused to me, ussing this hardware to make a backup of all my photos, videos, music and proffessional documents because i was going to make a format of my laptop to install Windows 7, I lost EVERYTHING, thanks to WD…

First of all: I DONT USE MY PASSPORT INTO A PVR OR SIMILAR, ONLY ON A LAPTOP and on a PC!

Second: I try with several cables (ALL FROM THE BRAND) and severals pcs/ laptops and OS (ALL RECOMMENDED, and dont think neither about XP SP2).

Third: I didn’t open the unit or drop it or disconected unappropiately…

Fourth: I read ALL the instructions and read (spending a lot of my time) the support page…

So… WHY IT DOESN’T WORK. It’s the second unit that i have after replace the first one with the same problem.

The unit works perfectly until, suddenly, it stopped to work even i pass all my data into the HDD, folder by folder (and yes, I use the fantastic and marvellous WD SMARTWARE, and yes i’m sarcastic because its consume 3/4 of the memory ussage in my pc or laptop)…without advising… It starts with the WD SES drive or whatever didnt works. Then you speak with WD support guys and they make you reinstall it… After that, sometimes the units show up but you can’t access on it, then you can’t see the units, then you try to change the unit letter, then you try with 3 differents cables (even the FAMOUS BOOSTER CABLE) and differents USB ports and… nothing, then you use the diagnosis software and didnt show VCD or general partiton and you finish for desperate yourself when you plug the hdd and only see the bright light blink and it doesn’t appears in the pc/laptop.

I read a lot of forums with a lot of people with a lot of problems with this product, you can start with this community  WD External Hard drive not recognized in my computer and you can also navigate a few and you will see that  there are a lot of references about it or finally belived that in the wire, there is a band whose name is “My WD isn’t recognized” and his big first single “Where is my SES Drive?”

You must consider that a lot of people has read but not write and much more has drop directly the product into the trash… So there can be only few which this HD works.

So, for all the people who is a huge fan of this brand (I buy this brand during the last 15 years), you might recognize that WD has commit a mistake that it can cost them many costumers, because the only solution is a replacement of a bad dessigned product.

Several people has lost their personal and proffessional stuffs and They cant afford each time that the WD MY PASSPORT ESSENTIAL FOR PC/ MAC with a VCD partition with the WD SMARTWARE is broken, pay over 800-1400 € to recovery data enterprises (recommended by WD) without a certain result…  and this product (oh my Goodness!) is made for make backups (Something is rotten in the state of Denmark)

So, because its bad dessigned with a delicated USB port and USB cable and even the product, because the disk is not protected inside (its amazing to watch in You tube, people who open it with a only hand or show the 12 pin connector instead the SATA port), a bad software which causes fails into the OS, high cost of memory resources, it stop working if the laptop starts in wake up way, problems with the hardware updates (I dont know if I forget something, help guys!)…, I feel highly betrayed for WD and I can understand people that says “BYE, BYE BLACKBIRD WD”!!