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Sujet: WD My Book Essential 1.5Tb Drives

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Yo!!! just got one (well 4 actually) of these and noticed that when you connect you get 2 drives. On is the HDD - weighing in at 1.38Tb and the other is a virtual CD driver with all the drivers and WD SmartWare software...

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of the "SmartWare" or is it just bloat as far as we are concerned?

Don't wanna risk installing it unless its of real use.

Cheers,

Roy
 
Posté Fri 19 Mar 10 @ 12:03 pm
reformat!
 
+1 Agree....Reformat
 
Always reformat new external hard drives and get rid of all the included junk.

Make sure you reformat as NTFS and not FAT32

DJ James
 
was goina ask the same question as i just got 2tb wd.thanks guys.only thing is i want to use mine with both windows and mac so what do i do with reformatting side of things
 
jamesvanek wrote :
Always reformat new external hard drives and get rid of all the included junk.

Make sure you reformat as NTFS and not FAT32

DJ James


There is nothing wrong with fat32 If you use Mac this is the only choice for full dual platform read and write.
 
 
No need to reformat... The main partition is 100% empty. The software is on a virtual cd drive and is only a 600Mb partition so seems hardly worth it...

I like the fact they've not bloated the useable drive...

What's wrong with FAT32? It's a universal format that can be read by virtually anything including media players and game consoles, which is good when you need music for a house party but don't want to take over the living room with equipment ;-)

Cheers,

Roy
 
I'm talking about native support in osx without the help of external programs. I know a few others like macfuse and ntfs for mac can be used as well
 
GadgetMan wrote :

What's wrong with FAT32?


for the size of files most DJ's use, there is nothing wrong with FAT32..

If you started storing lots of small files, then FAT32 wastes a lot of space..

IE: you have a 2TB drive (I'm making these numbers up), and a 5 KB file & FAT32.
That 5 KB file will actually take up 32kb (not a huge issue for us LOL)

(I think?) Fat32 also limites your file sizes to 4 GB. (again not an issue in most cases).

Fat32 is also tougher for windows to search thru then NTFS, as windows has to go thru the entire allocation table.
(again, not an issue for 10,000 files, but 1,000,000 files?)

conclusion.

on an external hard drive used for storing music files and music videos..
FAT32 VS NTFS, are pretty much equal.
Since FAT32 allows multi-OS compatibility (including dos), it actually has a slight lead.
 
We are talking about a 1.5 TB drive here.

Security:

FAT32 provides very little security. A user with access to a drive using FAT32 has access to the files on that drive.

NTFS allows the use of NTFS Permissions. It's much more difficult to implement, but folder and file access can be controlled individually, down to an an extreme degree if necessary.

Space Efficiency:

NTFS handles space management much more efficiently than FAT32. Cluster sizes play an important part in how much disk space is wasted storing files. NTFS provides smaller cluster sizes and less disk space waste than FAT32.

Reliability:

FAT32 drives are much more susceptible to disk errors.

NTFS volumes have the ability to recover from errors more readily than similar FAT32 volumes.

Log files are created under NTFS which can be used for automatic file system repairs.

NTFS supports dynamic cluster remapping for bad sectors and prevent them from being used in the future.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/ntfs_or_fat32_file_system.htm

Did I forget to mention that data compression is also available with NTFS.

Use what you want but I really don't see the point in using fat 32 unless you are using Windows 98 or god forbid '95. It's prolly just me. I really don't embrace technology that's over 10 years old and was replaced by a better system years ago.

DJ James
 
I use the 1.5 tb wd drive and just uninstalled the smartware. Causes my system to slow down. I have had no problems running both music and video off of the drive.
 
Hey! its there any danger this days on a hard drive this large messing up? I know way back you had to worry that if the hard drive went "KAPUTS"..then the larger the drive..the more data you lost...any worries on this?
 
pmurnyack wrote :
I use the 1.5 tb wd drive and just uninstalled the smartware. Causes my system to slow down. I have had no problems running both music and video off of the drive.


Thanks for answering the original question ;-)

Cheers,

Roy
 
thetracker510 wrote :
Hey! its there any danger this days on a hard drive this large messing up? I know way back you had to worry that if the hard drive went "KAPUTS"..then the larger the drive..the more data you lost...any worries on this?


Simply make sure all your files are backed up. Preferably to two or more different locations,

If you do not backup, then you risk losing all your files, regardless of how big the drive is. Hard disks are mechanical devices and will eventually fail (Or could even be stolen, damaged due to droppping, etc.)
 


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