Nov 2009
WD Smartware Removal
Nov 17 2009 11:11 PM Filed in: Apple
My Iomega external drive I had connected to my Mac
Mini started acting up, so I decided to retire it. I
purchased a Western Digital My Book with 1.5 TB of
space. This will hold my Time Machine backups, and I
will also store music, photos and videos on there.
I didn't notice when I purchased the drive that it came with some software called WD Smartware. Apparently this is backup software. I didn't think anything of it, since I wasn't interested in using some other backup software, I have been happy with Time Machine. When I connected the drive to my Mac Mini, the drive mounted, and then I also noticed another icon on the desktop called WD Smartware. I right clicked on it and chose 'Eject', it unmounted, and then automatically remounted itself. I tried this a couple times, but it just kept remounting. I double clicked the icon to open the folder, and found a readme file. Apparently this is a virtual CD which you use to install the WD Smartware application. The virtual CD will keep mounting itself, until you install the software. Too bad if you don't want it installed. I performed a quick Google search, and found that this is a big issue with a lot of people. Like me, all of these people do not want software shoved down their throat.
I did a Google search on removing the software, and that's when I found that it's not even a separate partition that can be erased, it's part of the firmware of the drive itself. Western Digital has provided a firmware update to remove the software, but it only works with Windows. No such tool for Mac users. I guess you could go through the trouble of hooking it up to a Windows machine, then installing the firmware update, then hook it up to your Mac, but there's no guarantee this would work. The fix I found for the moment is to edit my /etc/fstab file to stop that partition from mounting. This is pretty simple. First you need to get the UUID of the partition. To do this run the following command in Terminal.app
diskutil info /Volumes/WD\ SmartWare
This should present you with information about the mounted partition. Find the line that has the Volume UUID and copy the UUID. Next you will need to edit /etc/fstab and add the following line
UUID=the_uuid_you_copied none hfs rw, noauto 0 0
Once you've edited and saved your updated /etc/fstab file, you should be able to right click and 'Eject' the WD SmartWare Virtual CD and it shouldn't remount itself.
It sucks that you have to go through so much trouble. Hopefully enough people complain to Western Digital about this so that in the future they don't try to force the software on their customers. I know I'll never purchase another drive of theirs that comes with this software.
I didn't notice when I purchased the drive that it came with some software called WD Smartware. Apparently this is backup software. I didn't think anything of it, since I wasn't interested in using some other backup software, I have been happy with Time Machine. When I connected the drive to my Mac Mini, the drive mounted, and then I also noticed another icon on the desktop called WD Smartware. I right clicked on it and chose 'Eject', it unmounted, and then automatically remounted itself. I tried this a couple times, but it just kept remounting. I double clicked the icon to open the folder, and found a readme file. Apparently this is a virtual CD which you use to install the WD Smartware application. The virtual CD will keep mounting itself, until you install the software. Too bad if you don't want it installed. I performed a quick Google search, and found that this is a big issue with a lot of people. Like me, all of these people do not want software shoved down their throat.
I did a Google search on removing the software, and that's when I found that it's not even a separate partition that can be erased, it's part of the firmware of the drive itself. Western Digital has provided a firmware update to remove the software, but it only works with Windows. No such tool for Mac users. I guess you could go through the trouble of hooking it up to a Windows machine, then installing the firmware update, then hook it up to your Mac, but there's no guarantee this would work. The fix I found for the moment is to edit my /etc/fstab file to stop that partition from mounting. This is pretty simple. First you need to get the UUID of the partition. To do this run the following command in Terminal.app
diskutil info /Volumes/WD\ SmartWare
This should present you with information about the mounted partition. Find the line that has the Volume UUID and copy the UUID. Next you will need to edit /etc/fstab and add the following line
UUID=the_uuid_you_copied none hfs rw, noauto 0 0
Once you've edited and saved your updated /etc/fstab file, you should be able to right click and 'Eject' the WD SmartWare Virtual CD and it shouldn't remount itself.
It sucks that you have to go through so much trouble. Hopefully enough people complain to Western Digital about this so that in the future they don't try to force the software on their customers. I know I'll never purchase another drive of theirs that comes with this software.
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