Clearing an External WD HD

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by Shankle, Jul 5, 2010.

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  1. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    To Sully: I managed to use diskpart without destroying anything.

    To Pandlouk: I finally got it to work. However the WD Crap data is still
    there and I will have to use the other method to get rid of it.
     
  2. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    I was hoping you would get it to work but kind of felt it would not.

     
  3. colinp

    colinp Registered Member

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    This is certainly not a solution to your current problem, but I have two external WD drives. A 1TB drive (My book I think it is called) that has all that WD crap on it, but I use it as local drive on my WDTV, so I am not too interested in fussing about with it. The other WD drive I have is a 2TB "Elements" drive that has no crap on it (well no crap that I didn't put on myself) and is just a bare bones drive.
    So the moral of this story, is stay away from anything that purports to "auto" anything and stay with the simple or "elements" type drives.

    Colin
     
  4. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    Progress report:
    I managed to get the HD out of the case without breaking the case.
    Lots of fun. There are tabs holding it on 3 sides. But the tutorials
    on you tube don't mention that.

    Anyway I took it all apart and put the drive in wiffies puter an ran
    Parted Magic. It showed a drive of 298 G. The drive is a 320G drive.
    So the difference is Smartware and god knows what.
    Anyway I was unable to get rid of the crap. I was able to disable
    Smartware. Was not able to format the drive with Partd Magic.:mad:
     
  5. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    Does Part Magic let you zero out the drive? If not, I think you will have to do it with something like DBAN. They have an iso you can burn and boot off of. No need to do anything other than a single pass.

     
  6. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    to Tgell:
    Will try Dban. Let you know what happens.

    I took out the regular hd on wiffies puter and put in the wd external.
    Installed windows xp Pro. Ran Parted magic and it showed the same nonsence.
    298+G for a 320G drive.
    Installed pclinuxos and ran Parted Magic again. Same thing 298+G for a
    320 G hd.
     
  7. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    To Tgell:

    Dban didn't clear the Smartware. Still have a 298+G on a 320G HD.
     
  8. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    I came across this on a forum:

    See Post #3. It looks like they changed the firmware so even using the remove from enclosure method no longer works.

    Here


    Well, I have learned one thing from this thread, I am not going to buy an external WD drive.
     
  9. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    Are you sure that after running diskpart it was still there?
    A 320G hard disk= 320.000.000.000 bytes
    Manufacturers count the kb, mb, gb as following:
    1 kb = 1000 b
    1 mb = 1000 kb = 1.000.0000 b
    1 gb = 1000 mb = 1.000.0000 kb = 1.000.000.000 b
    and so on.

    But the multiple unit values of bytes in reality are the following:
    1 kb= 1024 b
    1 mb = 1024 kb = 1.048.576 b
    1 gb = 1024 mb = 1.048.576 kb = 1.073.741.824 b
    and so on.

    This means that the 320gb advertised by the manufacturer is in reality a hard disk of 298,023 gb.

    Panagiotis
     
  10. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    Thanks for answering Tgell and Pandlouk.
    I haven't given up yettttt.
    Ordered the Thermaltake dock M# n0028usu today from Newegg.
    Decent price for something that will be obsolete shortly.
    I'll probably get it Tues. or Wed.
    Then I will experiment. Maybe try formating the darned thing.
    Maybe Vista or XP will let me format it.

    I took out/disconnected the drives before putting in this external drive.
    Therefor I didn't have format capabilities with Parted Magic.
    Was very afraid of messing up my present system as it is not backed
    up at present.

    Maybe my problem is solved and I am to dumb to realize it.
    But I don't think so.....
     
  11. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    For me you already solved.

    320g hard disk = 298+gb
    500g hard disk = 465+gb
    1 terra disk = 931+gb

    ps. if it was still on the free space would be 297+gb (since smartware condumes 700mb).

    Panagiotis
     
  12. Shankle

    Shankle Registered Member

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    Got my Thermaltake dock today.
    Put in the WD drive from the MY Book.
    Started Partd Magic and formated the drive.
    Here are the results:

    298.09 gb total size
    73.76 mb used
    298.02 gb unused

    Seems that WD has put their Crap on with super glue.

    GOOOODBY WD
    Stung once but never twice.
     
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