I am soon going to buy my first HD. I have been reading many reviews and have come across some which say avoid the smartware. What is smartware and what are its problems?I am going to be storing lossless audio files on the HD and sharing them with a music sharing hub. Can someone reccommend a good HD for this purpose and also some ones to avoid?
THERE IS NO SOFTWARE ON THESE HARD DRIVES. The other WD products have some, but not these. These simply plug into your USB and are ready to use. Very simple and IMO the best ones.
Smartware is just extra junk software I guess? Some external hard drives have them but if you format it or choose not to install, you can get around it. I bought this WD 2TB hard drive and it hasn’t tried to install any software on me. Very simple to use, just drag and drop.
I’m no expert, but I’ve been using external hard drives since 2000 to archive photos–I have five now, getting ready to buy another. Usually these drives come with a CD or suggest you download on some sort of backup software. Maybe I’m missing something, but this software never seems to work quite right, is clunky, intrusive or outright destructive.
I just format my new drive, then drag and drop files I want to save. Or you can do a full system backup. I think my next HD will be the 2 TB Western Digital WD Elements.
