14 replies to this topic

[Nvyseal]

images/news/hardware.jpgWestern Digital network drives crippled -- no serving any multimedia files

A complete list of unauthorized files can be found here. Western Digital claims they have to block such files from being shared “due to unverifiable media license authentication.” To put it in human-speak: Those files might be copyrighted, and for some reason, Western Digital has set itself up as the copyright judge, jury, and executioner of your hard drive and data!

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“This is the most extreme example I’ve seen yet of tech companies crippling data devices in order to please Hollywood: Western Digital is disabling sharing of any avi, divx, mp3, mpeg, and many other files on its network connected devices; due to unverifiable media license authentication’. Just wondering — who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need to share?”

boingboing

[VROSA]

Hollywood cajolers

[Sphere]

WTF?
So... a WD drive actually has firmware that scans the disk for files that it isn't allowed to share??

How long will it take for the first actual harddisk firmware hack because of this?

[BlueScreenOfDeath]

Looks like i'll never buy another WD drive again. All Seagates here

[VoodooGuru]

I stopped using Western Digital drives a long time ago. I had 2 crash within days of each other and I have a friend who owns an ISP and builds computers who used to always have a stack of bad WD drives waiting to be RMAd. Their products are junk in my opinion.

[Scuba]

BlueScreenOfDeath, on Dec 7 2007, 04:04 PM, said:

Looks like i'll never buy another WD drive again. All Seagates here

I'm with you there. I have never liked WD. I use to deal with them all the time and they were crashing on us left and right. Just found them to be a pain. I like my Maxtor, its held strong over the years but I think I may try the Seagate when I do an upgrade, I have heard good things about them.

[hog]

Never owned a WD! Before it was Maxtor and now Seagate and happy of it. Well, that thing is pretty stupid and that quote resumes my opinion (and most of yours I guess) well :

"Just wondering — who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need to share?”

This is a weird move from WD IMO, if people used their drives for copyright infringement, it's not their problem. The drives are made to share files. What kind of files people share should be up to them and then it's the customer's problem if he gets caught for "illegal" things...

Anyways, that's BS lol.

[VROSA]

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All Seagates here

The way to go !

[Camaro]

I have some raptors that are and have been great, but I would never buy anyother wd drives.

[m.oreilly]

BlueScreenOfDeath, on Dec 7 2007, 02:04 PM, said:

All Seagates here

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/new...ate-snubs-linux

[talker]

I bought WD back in the days that a 4 GB HDD was large and cost $120.00 USD. I was never happy with the drives so I switched to Maxtor and now by proxy, Seagate. I believe WD just committed podiatral suicide...talker.

Edited by talker, 08 December 2007 - 11:50 PM.

[Tweak]

Amazing, working in the pc repair business for several years now and always had stacks of Maxtor drives for RMA or to be tossed, WD also had issues but much much fewer, my Raptors are I think around 5yrs old now and are almost always run since bought, besides that almost every other drive I have is WD as well, I have never as of yet lost data due to a WD failure so I count my blessings, I would like seeing as I am not really capable of affording anything currently to eventually upgrade to either the new 7200.11 Seagates or the 32MB cache Hitachi drives when my next opp comes around for an upgrade to my antique system.

[WFO]

Just wondering if formatting cures this? I've never owned a WD. A Seagate purchaser here.

[Christopholofigus]

You're kidding right? WD is making it impossible to share files on a drive I bought and paid for?! F*ck that! I'm guessing that this is just for a service that they provide right? (not the actual drive) I don't think they can control what goes on with your personal or business network, just their WD Anywhere Access. Still sucks though.

[TheBearLT]

Hacked Firmware guys.. that would be the Best solution