Just a moan & bit of advice. Just purchased a WD My Passport Essentials external HD. When first plugged in, as with all ext drives these days, it tries to install backup software etc. Cancelled that & tried formatting the drive. Turns out the drive has a hidden partition of about 500Mb that has a load of software on that cannot be deleted - it's evidently built into the firmware of the drive and appears as a CD Drive in Disk Management. After a bit of rooting around I found a method of hiding it, but this still entailed having to download & run a firmware update followed by running another management program that hid the 'partition' for good, but does not remove it. I'm sorely tempted to take the drive back purely because of this imposed software - there's nothing in the instructions about having it imposed on the user and for the average buyer they just get lumped with it. Has anyone else come across this & got any other solutions? "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

There's program called delpart<a ref="http://russelltexas.com/delpart.htm">. that should get rid of it. We were the unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the unnecessary, for the ungrateful. VietNam War Poster

Thanks for reply. That's the problem, it's not a 'normal' partition so delpart & similar cannot touch it because it's written into the firmware - I imagine if you could tinker with the firmware the risk is making the unit un-useable. Done a bit of research since original post & it seem to be a known problem. Also sent a snotty e-mail to WD customer service, waiting to hear their response. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."

I have a couple of WD My Passport Essentials. Here is what I did: When I plugged in the EUHD I stopped the installation then opened Windows Explorer to access it and delete the preinstalled content in its entirety. Since then I never have any more problem. i_Xp/VistaUser

Thanks for reply. Yes, I've had passports in the past. The new ones have this partition that appears as a CDROM - you cannot just delete the contents. Also they've changed the USB connector to a non-standard one, just to really rub it in. "I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us..."