Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Having always liked Western Digital Quality, I purchased a few of these drives - and was horrified to learn that WD has chosen to pre-install a large suite of largely useless 'SmartWare' on the drive. The problem is, it's not defeatable; it takes up disk space, but is activated in Flash - so no way to get rid of it. It robs you of a drive letter (in windows) or a drive on Mac OS X - again, without a way to get rid of it. After weeks of complaining by users, WD issues a 'VCD' utility that allows you to 'hide' it (but not get rid of it); the zinger is that the current drives need updated firmware to run VCD - and WD has NOT published the firmware updater for Studio drives yet, hence making the former utility useless. All in all a bad experience, a drive marred by mad design, and I for one will no longer purchase WD until they reverse this strategy of spyware on a drive that cannot be overridden. From the feedback everywhere, I assume they will get the message. UPDATED: The new 'info' WD had Amazon add to the line (visit support to hide VCD) is NOT true; the support site ONLY has updates for the Elite and Essential, but NOT for the Studio line yet. That means, the updater won't work, as the firmware updater required has still not been released. Check it yourself on their site; very, very poor support and misleading post