WD My Book essentials + new clean hdd

[loki]

Hi everyone,

I bought 3x WD My Book essentials 2Tb for £30 (minus the drives) - USB3 port only. They are in mint condition with the protective cellophane on, so it look likes they just needed the drives, everything else is there.

I will use one for DR stock & am thinking of using the other two with my spare WD 3Tb drives I have got.

I have managed to install the drives & format them through WD Smartware & that works great - Drive data is encrypted as expected via the bridge board. But when I use Smartware which is installed on my pc to password protect the drive - this works but the virtual cd it creates is 30mb & says raw. I can unlock it via the installed smartware but would like to recreate that virtual cd with the UDF & unlock applications ect to get it working properly? like it would be if bought new.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Loki

[einstein9]

try to Update its FW see if it works or not 1st.

[loki]

try to Update its FW see if it works or not 1st.

Just tried that, no joy.
Was thinking of trying a sector by sector clone of a working one? I'm assuming that the vritual cd sectors are actually stored on the hdd & not on a rom chip - otherwise the firmware should have worked?
Hmmmm a puzzle

[einstein9]

yes you are right on hdd

do not forget the Master Key as well

[loki]

Just to give an update.
Cloning a WD My Book Essential to a new/clean hard drive works fine & virtual cd also works.
I can now use it like a new one & saved me about £90 per device (£180 )
Just make sure you clone to same size drive.
Did my cloning using my DDI.

Loki

[DR-Kiev]

Just make sure you clone to same size drive.

Doesn't matter. You can put VCD area just in every place near the end (correspondingly to its size) and strictly indicate the adress inside keysector.