Hi
I’m trying to find out the firmware version of this drive, does anybody know how to do this (Windows 7 or Windows Vista 32 bit)??
Many Thanks…!
[SIDE RANT]
On a sidenote I’ve had great fun with WD support today 
I have a new drive plugged into my Windows 7 64 bit PC, none of the software really works properly esp firmware updates. Finally managed to fudge a few workarounds but it was a nightware.
Decided to move to a 32 bit Windows 7 PC and things worked better, but STILL firmware update not working “Firmware update failed”, drive was detected OK though):
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=114&sid=104&lang=en
Contacted support they ask me to go into safe mode, then safe mode for networking… all that happened here was that the drive failed to detect. They then turn around and say Windows 7 is not supported for firmware updates at all - I mean seriously??? I said I didn’t have a copy of Vista running (which was true at the time)
Rang back support desk admittedly about 10 mins before closing (was despirate to get this running for the weekend) stating I had it on a 32 bit Vista machine that I borrowed, and that there was NO CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR when it came to applying a firmware update via Vista.
I was immediately told the issue had to be escalated and that they would ring me back my Tuesday as it was too late in the day to talk to the second tier level of support. They couldn’t even tell me how to find the firmware version of this drive.
[/END SIDE RANT]
So if anybody know how to detect firmware version, and how to upgrade firmware with these 6TB drives please let me know!
Not cool 
Dude, there’s NO firmware update for your drive, the 6TB Studio 2 came out much more later than the last firmware release for the Studio 2, which dates from July 2009, so you already have it (It’s not the same firmware than the Studio and Studio LX with Smartware).
You can confirm the firmware release for your drive here on WD’s site.
And to check your current firmware, then go to device manager> Locate the Studio 2 under disk drives> right-click and select properties> Go to the details tab and select “Hardware IDs”> You should see the firmware revision.
The problem here is that 64-bit operating systems (Both Windows and Mac) tend not to work with the software that comes with the Studio II and that can’t be addressed with a firmware update because the problem is not the drive itself.
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> The problem here is that 64-bit operating systems (Both Windows and Mac) tend not to work with the software that comes with the Studio II and that can’t be addressed with a firmware update because the problem is not the drive itself.
Right - the problem is that the WD software hasn’t been developed for 64 bit, and even 32 bit Windows isn’t supported by their support (even though the blurb states “Windows” is supported)… It would be fair enough if this was a “new” OS but it isn’t… and this is the only major vendor I can think of in this situation, most were supporting Win7 way before official release…
Well at least it formatted NTFS correctly with the WD software (after moving the drive to RAID and performing a quick format).
Sorry I lied!!!
After spending four days backing up my data to a NTFS partition on drive, the drive suddenly developed a habbit of disappearing files (really weird) and then it finally lost all it’s data and has asked me to format the drive (convetred itself to RAW, no data available). Recovery software didn’t work (probably because that software does not support drives greater than 2TB).
So back to the drawing board, so this time I will do a full format with Windows 7 (looks like this format will take about a week or even longer, it’s progressing about 1% every 45 mins on eSATA???).
I’ve had WD before, this is so far the worst experience ever… no wonder they are pushing this product towards MAC users.
