External Drive Ideas - WD Community

control led blinking when PC/laptop off/closed. Remove of boring LED flashing !!!

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LED blinking notification when PC working is very useful. But, when you go to sleep, I hate all theses led light; im feelining like Im in night club !

Its will be cool to control this behavior : remove LED light when PC is not working. Please note: remove USB every day is not solution.

Please Vote!

Together we will win!

Why does WD Lock / Unlocker require administration rights?

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It's really bloody annoying.

I purchased the WD My Passport 2TB Portable Hard Drive because it had hardware hardware encryption thus it shouldn't need a device driver like software hardware encryption programs do.

I've been trying to get a decently sized fast portable usb powered hard drive with hardware encryption and password protection that i can use on any PC regardless of account permissions for years now and i am still struggling.

Don't you hard drive companies understand that people wish to use their portable hds at work as well as at home?

The only company i've found to include locking / unlocking software that doesn't require admin rights is by Intergral but they don't do portable usb powered hard drives, only memory sticks

It's obvious it can be done, i don't just get why no one else is doing this?

Basically i've got a super small and fast 2tb hard drive that i can't take advantage of the hardware encryption / password software because of this silly issue of requiring administration rights to access a drive when password protected.

My work PC runs Windows XP and when plugging the drive in (without a password), it loads up without the the need for an admin account.

Passport shouldn't require any software installation to work properly

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Passport shouldn't require any software installation to work properly. It shouldn't prompt to install any drivers or application software.

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USB 3.0 for My Passport Studio

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I'd like to request that the new My Passport Studio 2Tb external drive's USB 2.0 port be upgraded to a USB 3.0 one. I'd like to buy this for use with my PC and prefer the aluminium case to the black plastic one for the My Passport 2Tb. I'm really surprised the new Studios were released witha USB 2.0 port in the first place, since the new Intel chipsets with on-board USB 3.0 mean that it's highly likely that the new round of MacBooks will have USB 3.0 ports. Thanks for reading this!

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More useful error messages in Firmware Updater

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Many users appear to be buying WD's newest drives and then getting frustrated that the Firmware Updater keeps telling them:

"Please disconnect all USB devices and connect only the WD drive you want to update; then click Rescan"

Users are getting frustrated spending hours (or days) trying to get the firmware updated.

The software should simply be telling them that it isn't finding an updatable drive beacuse the drive doesn't need any updating.

Please make future updaters more user-friendly.

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External Hard drives series connections

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External hard drive that can be connected by USB through series connections so we could easily add external HD with out lessening the number of USB socket from your computer.

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Wireless enabled disk drive.

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There are many portable hard drives available for home use that requires USB connectivity. Though USB connectivity is ideal for data transmissions, developing a portable hard drives that also provide wireless connectivity would help for homes with many desktop/laptop/Mac/IPAD devices to share the wireless enabled portable hard drive as a shared drive over the home network much as wireless printers do and facilitate sharing of music, photo and video files easily.

Please feel free to post your opinions on this idea.

Regards,

ideaman

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Its to darn slow

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WD are you going to get with the new tech??

USB any number it to slow. You can not put real storage in the box or you need a jet engine, earplugs and reliable AC.

What is the solution. First a ram drive to boot from etc. and as much attached EXTERNAL storage as you can imagine connected by Intel's new 'Thunderbolt' interface. Just look at the numbers.

Secondly has anyone ever actually got the theoretical speed out of USB, Firmwire or eSATA. NO!

Thunderbolt is a proper 2 channel bi-directional interface, designed by the guys who made your processor.

AND IT WORKS. Just received a three disc (3*3Tb) TB drive and it flies even on my MacBook Pro and they are not known for their speed!

Discuss

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Elements Desktop 3.0

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Suggestion

Upgrade Elements Desktop to USB 3.0.

Reason

If it's a conscious idea to separate the premium (My Book) from the basic (Elements) model by keeping the basic model at USB 2.0 then that's an unwise idea because

* it's more likely that it leads the customer to purchase Seagate Expansion 3.0 rather than My Book 3.0

* the size difference (207 × 126 × 40 mm v. 165 × 135 × 48 mm) comlicate stacking a combination of models (Elements Desktop and Seagate Expansion) symmatrically

* the reasons given in this discussion

4 TB

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Please introduce a 4 TB (single disk) external drive.

FIX UPDATE PROCESS FOR FIRMWARE & SMARTWARE

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I bought a 750GB external harddrive ( my book essentials) at the end of May, 2010.

I have been in 'phone and email ' contact with WD staffers to try and fix a fundamental issue...that of update firmware and software for this Ext. HD......no success in updating either firmware OR software OR getting the smartware installed to even do the auto backup. I am now in "drag and Drop" mode which is working..but no use of Smartware.

I have a Windows Vista 32 bit o/s which is operating very well. The advice I get from WDJeremy is to adjust the settings in Windows to see if this works.

My suggestion to WD is for you to talk to your technical staffers and FIX what is wrong with the "firmware and Smartware update" process for "My Book Essentials".

Updating software with any other Software Co is not a problem..but for some reason, WD has big issues with updating its software for its users.

Please fix the problem so that the update process is as simple as any other software update....this is not rocket science...

WD did a masterful job at " marketing" the "easy to use" external HD using smartware...but it does not work for many a user after the initial backup...Please look at my file as I'm registered and there are a multitude attempts documented to fix the problem but without success.

Thanks for listening...Garry

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Thunderbolt Ready (and of course USB 3.0 ready)

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I don't really get the difference in pricing for MyPassport PC and Mac. It's the same drive, the Mac version is slightly more expensive, but the PC version is compatible with usb 2.0 and usb 3.0 and the Mac version is not...

The thing is, not only will next Mac releases have usb 3.0 implented when Ivy bridges comes out but also Thunderbolt is on all Mac and coming rapidly to recent PC ultrabooks, WD hard drives or at least the MyPassport for Mac should be Thunderbolt ready and have the adequate slot.

Plus it makes MyPassport Studio clearly obsolete : nobody serious about Video/Graphic/Audio production and editing, and who uses a Mac, continues to use Firewire, which is clearly a dying interface.
It really is about Thunderbolt and I hope the next WD will be compatible because it's going to be REALLY quickly adopted by users compared to eSata or even usb 3.0.

In short : make the next MyPassport for Mac (and PC is a safe bet) with a micro-usb 3 and a thunderbolt port (and they are about the same size).

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Thunderbolt External Hard Drive for Mac

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Dear WD:

How about creating a Thunderbolt-enabled external hard disk drive for the Mac? If it had USB 3.0 that would also be nice. Thx for your great products!

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Windows 7 - Devices & Printers (Device Staging) - realistic icons

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Hey guys,

my external WD My Passport Essential SE hard disk drive doesn't get a realistic icon as it's supposed to do.

A problem on my end can be excluded, because WD already confirmed that there's currently no realistic icon for _any_ WD drive available.

Please vote for this idea, if you agree that it's nice to have and that WD should submit such icons to Microsoft for proper display within the Device & Printers section of Windows 7 or later.

Thanks in advance,

Martin

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Automatically turn on hard disk when pc turn on is stupid. At least let us choose.

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my stupid cheap philips external hard drive is capable to start with the computer if I leave the power on button to on,

and it remains off if I leave the power button to off.

this is how an external hard disk should work.

why WD isn't able to reproduce a smart behaviour like this?

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Daisy chain USB disks together

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Would be great if you could plug 1 drive into another, like SCSI devices.

At least the power supply should have a Y cable, so you don't need to keep finding plugs each time you buy another drive.

PLEASE consider this, it would only add pennys to the design and encourage people to stick with WD drives

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USB Hard Drive with Hardware Write Protection Switch

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Hello,

Back in the 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy days, one could switch a floppy into "read-only" mode, protecting the data from viruses and user mistakes.

Nowadays I moved to DVD and Blu-Ray technology for data backup. The problem is that even 25 GB Blu-Ray discs are not enough for my needs.

I am a loyal, long-term WD customer (buying lots of internal WD Green and Black caviars for Home use).

I need USB Hard Drive with Hardware Write Protection Switch (2 TB size, for data backup).

Please consider it.

Thanks in advance,

-Technologov, 4.Nov.2011.

Vote for VCD removal ! (permanently)

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Everybody who has problems with the VCD partition (which sometimes makes the disk useless, like mine which I want to use it as a PVR in a TV decoder, as I explain in another post) please vote and ask WD to remove PERMANENTLY the VCD partition.

Just sign in and vote.

Maybe WD would finally consider to respect its customers opinion and requirements.

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Support WD Drive Manager/RAID Manager on eSATA interface for My Book Studio Edition II

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Dear WD,

Please provide a software update to enable WD Drive Manager to support the eSATA interface so the LED light activity for RAID degraded mode is guaranteed.

We are disappointed this isn't supported as we prefer the faster data transfer of the eSATA over USB. We are using this in a mirrored RAID mode for redundancy for critical research data and would like to rely on the LED light indicators. Switching to USB temporarily to monitor this is not an ideal situation for our busy researchers.

One more suggestion is to change the power plug to standard so it doesn't take up extra space on a surge protector.

Nay thanks,

Jill

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External Hard drive for ipad

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I look everywhere and there is only one way to add additional mass storage to the ipad. I heard that it would take too much power away from the ipad if they added support for hard drive connectivity. My idea would be for all tablet, PC, smartphone, Macs, etc...

My idea is this. (sorry if it has similar posts) I think if you guys made a device that would act as a LAN with it's own IP address and everything, that you could access all your files and save battery power too because the device isn't drawing power from your ipad. It would be like accessing the internet. The only difference between now and this is that your data is streamed to you. You can always add the option to plug in by USB too. This way you aren't stuck with only 32GB. And if you can work with apple to allow you to stream your movies to apple tv, ipad, ipod, iphone... then that's great. If not you have all the other devices that it will be compatible with. Think of it like icloud portable. would work great for camping. To access you info all you do is charge your HDD or plug it in, open your web browser up and type in the IP address. Voila! Your files are right there. The only obstacles that I can think of would be having the device reading the files. Like if you have a movie or video and having Windows media player open it. Or in the ipads case, it's video app. Which would be quick time I guess. Anyway, good idea. Just needs the edges smoothed out.

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