My Passport Essential - How to remove annoying features...

So I got a Best Buy gift card, and just recently I had my external HD case go bad on me. So I bought a My Passport Essential WD drive. It's nice and all but the thing is partitioned in a way that 20GB show up as a CD drive of all things

Does anyone know how to remove this partition?

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tiersten

WDC site.

laidbackfreak

tiersten wrote: »

WDC site.

snap.... damn beat me to it lol

veritas_libertas

Bummer, you can disable but not remove it

I hate not having full control over a device...

Thanks for the help guys!

tiersten

It shouldn't be 20GB though?

veritas_libertas

tiersten wrote: »

It shouldn't be 20GB though?

Seems that it was only a few MBs after I modified the program. I hate when they do stuff like this. It reminds me of the flash drives only without a full removal option

tiersten

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Seems that it was only a few MBs after I modified the program. I hate when they do stuff like this. It reminds me of the flash drives only without a full removal option

According to WD, it should be around 500ish MB. There doesn't appear to be any way of recovering that lost space however. All the tool does as you've found out is to just hide it.

exampasser

Have you tried a low-level format utility? I found a general purpose one:
Download HDD Low Level Format Tool (free)

tiersten

exampasser wrote: »

Have you tried a low-level format utility? I found a general purpose one:
Download HDD Low Level Format Tool (free)

Won't do anything in this case. It won't do anything even for a regular HD since you can't and shouldn't do a proper low level format.

The controller chip inside the box is doing the CD drive emulation and all the tool does is tell the chip not to announce to the PC that the virtual CD drive exists. The space is still being used. You can't get at it because from the point of view of the PC, that space doesn't exist. The controller chip tells the PC that the drive is only 1TB-500MB or whatever the original disk size is. This means formatting won't touch it.

tiersten

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Seems that it was only a few MBs after I modified the program. I hate when they do stuff like this. It reminds me of the flash drives only without a full removal option

Strange that they don't give you the ability to completely disable it though. I didn't know they did this and it is unlikely I'd get one of their drives if it came with this "feature".

exampasser

tiersten wrote: »

Won't do anything in this case. It won't do anything even for a regular HD since you can't and shouldn't do a proper low level format.

The controller chip inside the box is doing the CD drive emulation and all the tool does is tell the chip not to announce to the PC that the virtual CD drive exists. The space is still being used. You can't get at it because from the point of view of the PC, that space doesn't exist. The controller chip tells the PC that the drive is only 1TB-500MB or whatever the original disk size is. This means formatting won't touch it.

In that case it sounds like you will need something like a hacked firmware update, that is the only other option I can think of.

tiersten

exampasser wrote: »

In that case it sounds like you will need something like a hacked firmware update, that is the only other option I can think of.

Would you trust your data to a HD that you've hacked the firmware on?

I don't think you can even yank the drive out. Looking around online, the disk inside the 1TB version at least has an odd non standard connector on it.

exampasser

tiersten wrote: »

Would you trust your data to a HD that you've hacked the firmware on?

I don't think you can even yank the drive out. Looking around online, the disk inside the 1TB version at least has an odd non standard connector on it.

Ah! You shot down my future suggestion of placing another hard drive in case.

veritas_libertas

tiersten wrote: »

Would you trust your data to a HD that you've hacked the firmware on?

No way...

I am perfectly fine the way it is, I just think not giving a turn off feature is ridiculous.