PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO REMOVE SMARTWARE!

[covyc]

Can somebody please help me and tell me how to remove smartware, VCD, and the partition completely on a my passport on windows 7? i do not use the drive to back up files i use it more as a big flash drive and see this as a complete waste of space. i also feel that it is false advertising as i was sold a 500gb drive which has a lot less AVAILIBLE space than advertised!

[ThePizzaMatrix]

Windows 7 will only let you see 465GB out of the 500GB. Connect your drive to a Mac than runs 10.6 or 10.7 and you'll see the whole 500GB.

Smartware can be removed from your computer if you uninstall it, but you can't remove the VCD at all. It's a part of the drive's firmware used to allow drive unlocking when the password is set.

[Ardvark]

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ThePizzaMatrix wrote:

Windows 7 will only let you see 465GB out of the 500GB. Connect your drive to a Mac than runs 10.6 or 10.7 and you'll see the whole 500GB.

Smartware can be removed from your computer if you uninstall it, but you can't remove the VCD at all. It's a part of the drive's firmware used to allow drive unlocking when the password is set.

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Thats not actually accurate.Windows shows all the available space, it just incorrectly counts the space (it uses binary (2-based math)  to do the caluclation whereas WD (and all other HD makers) use decimals (10-based math) to do them. Apple only recently changed to use the decimal system as well. - You are actually getting the full space advertised on the box. If you have issue with this, I'd suggest calling Microsoft and asking them to change it 

SmartWare only uses a very small ammount of space (less than a single 20 minute video in most cases) if you have one of the older versions of the drive that includes the full version on the VCD. Most of the newer ones i've gotten have a VCD the size of a few photos that only contains the drive unlocker.

[ThePizzaMatrix]

Yep, I was just trying to make it easy without moving to explain binary vs. decimal numbers