OT: Reformatting a WD 2 TB portable hard drive
Kharma
Posts: 3,214
in The Commons
I purchased a WD 2TB portable HD and am wondering about the software on it..does anyone use it? Or isit rather useless? I want as much space on the drive as possible as I want to download and install all my Daz/ Rendo products to it and then use it to switch between my desktop and laptop, instead of downloading everything twice, but didn't know if that software on it was necessary or not or if I could just reformat it to utilize that space.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I don't know about this particular drive but when I get a drive with software pre-installed I never use it. I don't delete it, it generally doesn't take much room and I hang on to it just in case I might want to try it one day. It might be very good but it's usually some sort of backup software and I prefer to do backups my own way. I've never come across a drive where you need to use the pre-installed software.
I don't reformat, I just blow the additional software away. I also turn indexing off on the drives and disable the recycle/undelete process. But I'm obsessive about doing backups, so I can recover something if I blow it away accidentally.
Generaly WD and Seagate external drives have a drive diagnosis tool on them (SeaTools for Seagate and I don't remember the name of the WD eqivilent)
These are useful pieces of software that are your best friend when you think a drive may be going bad. Can check SMART status, Drive health, do a deep error check on the drive, and spit out the error code that you need to give WD or Seagate if you ever need to RMA an in warranty drive.
Seagate Tools works on all mechanical hard drives, although there are some features that don't work if non-Seagate; it's a great piece of software.
I use normal hard drives plugged in to a hard drive caddy (or portable enclosure), which allows me to use a few with one enclosure/caddy; an external drive is the same, just usually more expensive for the same thing. Thee is also the possibility that formatting it will prevent it working, as it requires the installed software - make sure first.