Reformatting Western Digital MyBook to work on Linux and Windows
 

I recently purchased a Western Digital MyBook with 2.72 TB of disk space. Unfortunately, I have found that it has this so-called "smartware" that prevents it from being used on Linux. External hard disks that I have used in the past have had no problems being mounted on either Linux or Windows. Is there a way to reformat this disk so that it can be used on either?

Thanks,
OH

Boot to linux and plug it in. Run Gparted or other partition app and see what it says. I guess it could be some issue but all I can guess is you may need to use GPT on it. Where did you get this smartware from ?
Is this a NAS?

I get the feeling there may be some virtual cd image on it but it should be possible to delete that all and mount it normally.

if you have already formatted it via linux. go back and format it via MS windows. use the WB removal software toolkit from their web page and get rid of their software, this is also the software they use to control "sleep" of the drive that can ONLY be deactivated via MS and OSx, not Linux.

Once you have disabled sleep and removed their bloatware, you can format via NFTS how ever you desire and enjoy the freedom of your external drive.

what i did was use dd to zero out the start of the drive

let it run while i had lunch (this removed the MS code on it )

then reform it ( i use ext4 and GPT) - sleep works JUST fine it powers down when not needed
using a udev rule to manually mount it will keep it from sleeping

but you can use NTFS and 3, 1 gig partitions .

I have not been able to see it from Linux, either from Debian on a Linux box or CentOS from a VM running on a Windows system. I got the latest version of WD Smartware. It has an erase function and says "Erasing your drive also deletes the WD SmartWare software and all of the support files, utilities, online help, and user manual files". Should I erase the disk?

Thanks,
OH

I can't see the drive from a Linux system. Would ext4 be visible on Windows or just on Linux? Would GPT and/or NTFS be visible on Linux or just on Windows?

Thanks,
OH

MS windows Operating systems will NEVER be able to read and wright to linux formats
( there are some third party programs that might work)
the open source GPL'ed formats are NOT OWNED by Microsoft

That is "odd"
it should just auto mount even with the MS Windows code on it
( just out of the box , it should auto mount the two (2) NTFS partitions )

I think ALL modern Linux OS's have NTFS-3g installed


for LARGE drives in the muti-Terabit range the OLD "dos table" is too small
GPT solves that issue

I use "Gparted live CD" for partitioning
it is WAY easier than using "parted" or gparted installed to the OS
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

the live cd will see it if it is plugged into the usb3 port while you boot into the live cd

after you set the sleep settings to never sleep, then feel free to erase the drive.

What I would like is a format that can be read by both Linux and Windows.

My apologies! I found that the Debian box had been corrupted by someone accidentally installing kunbuntu on top of Debian. I restored the uncorrupted HD using Clonzilla and now it reads the NTFS-3g disk fine. However, with my Centos system I needed to do the following to get my system to read the NTFS-3g disk.

I use GParted live CD as well.

Thanks,
OH