Hard Drive Warning- don't buy Western Digital products
 

I saw this on the register.

Don't buy Western Digital storage solutions if you plan on doing any file sharing on your home network. WD prevents users from sharing most media files.

That's pretty messed up.
I hate Western Digital drives anyways.

The way of the future people. You're going to see more and more of this as and entertainment industry and Microsoft keep putting on the pressure. Even Apple is in the arena though not as bad as Microsoft.

Western Digital products purchased in my life time: Zero.

can't you just buy the drives and put them in your own enclosues?

Thats only if you install the software that comes with it. Its nothing built into the drive itself.

And really, who installs that software anyway? LOL

re-partician, format, un-install any wd software. You should be OK

+1 don't install client app, or if you do just zip whatever files you are sharing.

Bingo.

Love the review - razor sharp.

As for the reformat/repartition approach or the approach of not installing the client app, I wouldn't be so sure - in the long term. I'm not a hardware expert, but I don't see what would prevent WD or any mfr of drives, controllers, or network cards/switches from implementing those controls in firmware. There's a lot of money at stake and your right to use just doesn't count. That's the whole point of win vista - DRM.

Get your copies of Win2K while you still can.

Jim

That's strange, must be the newly released products because my 1.5 year old WD 200GB HDD has no problems like that. I got it OEM at a small local computer hardware shop. Seems like none of this would be a problem if politicians stayed out of the back pocket of large corporations. Next step will be to reintroduce that legislation that capitalizes the internet, i'm sure someone will get a big bonus check from AT&T for that one.
On an added note, i'm sure pirates will stay on top of any possible software restrictions from file sharing. Also i'm running vista, and if i chose to partake in file sharing i'm positive it wouldn't be a problem, however i don't so what do i know ;) .

You are correct, the lockouts and controls are built into the firmware. A repartition/reformat would solve nothing. Also the controls block video files as well.

FWIW, Steven

I just put 4 hard drives into a Dell PowerEdge 400SC and loaded Windows Home Server a few weeks ago and it provides a really nice way to store MP3's and stuff (and share them as well).