Billgol

The SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) driver is different from the Virtual CD, and WD SmartWare 1.6.X. To access many of the optional features of your drive, you will be required to install both the SES driver, and WD SmartWare. If you wish to use the drive as a simple hard drive and do not require access to the advanced features of the drive, you can hide the VCD by following Answer ID 3835: How to disable (hide) the Virtual CD (VCD) for Windows or Mac OSX on a My Book or My Passport drive. Western Digital still recommends installing the SES driver when not using WD SmartWare, but the drive will function without it. The prompts to install the driver are part of the Windows Operating system and will always occur when connecting a drive to a Windows PC without the driver installed. You can download a copy of the SES driver from our knowledge base. For assistance doing this please see Answer ID 5419: WD SES driver download and instructions for recovering the WD SmartWare installer.