Using WD Mybook Essential in horizontal position

Hey guys, hope you all will be able to help me out. There are certain small and big question raised in my mind and I however need your help for getting it resolved. I have bought a brand new Western Digital MyBook Essential, I must say that I like it very much, this unit really works great. There’s not any issue with this hard drive technically or physically. Anyways my question might sound bit funny but I really wanted to know whether it is possible for me to use this hard drive keeping in horizontal position. I know that vertical position of this hard drive doesn’t really harm or affect anything but I does makes a lot of difference at least in my case. Actually the problem is that whenever I try to keep the hard drive vertically it unknowingly sometimes gets knocked and fall down which can obviously damage or harm the complete device. My hard drive is kept some 2 to 3 feet above the ground surface. It felt twice but fortunately nothing happened. I do not want to repeat the same thing again and again. Anyone who can let me know whether it is possible for me to keep the hard drive horizontally with making any difference to the device with respect to its performance. People say that the position doesn’t really matters and therefore I can simply change the position of this hard drive too but I believe that if position doesn’t matter than why all the Western digital MyBook Essential users prefer to keep their hard drive vertically and use. Please help me out and let me know with the confirmation whether I can use my device in what so ever position I want.

Along with this I also have another question regarding the removal of software from this hard disk. I have Smartware software installed into my hard drive and now as I said I need to remove this software from the hard drive.

I do have three MyBook Essential 2TB with me and let me tell you that I have kept all of them in horizontal position i.e. I have laid all of them down and I do not face any trouble of issue with them. All of them are working great. The only thing I make sure is that I do not tip over all of them together. Listing all the hard disks in an horizontal position would definitely cause a trouble, either of the hard disk can surely get damage or cause any physical injury to the device. Remember that if you have just one hard disk then you can simply get it down at the surface in horizontal position and use it without facing or causing problem. But if you have more than one hard disks like in my case, then make sure that you do not try to place them one above the other. This might cause a serious damage not just to one hard disk but surely damage all the hard disks. So as I already said if you have one hard disk place it in whatever position your are willing to keep and also if you are having two or more than two hard drives keep them in horizontal or vertical position as according to your requirement but don’t try to list them altogether.

Regarding the removal of that specific software, I am not sure with the solution. Better you suggestion someone else or search it on google.

There’s a simple reason why the Western Digital MyBook hard drive is preferred placing vertically and not horizontally. If you have noticed you must know that there are vents attached to the big plan surface of the hard drive which however allow the hot air to flow or pass out of the device. Actually the thing is that while functioning the hard drive becomes so hot and therefore produces excess heat which in turns harms the hard drive completely by crashing the device. So in order to eliminate the hot air out of the device it is necessary to let the vents function properly. if you keep the hard drive in an horizontal position obviously the vents would be blocked by the surface where you will place it and due to this it won’t be able to function properly for eliminating the air which would cause a big trouble for your hard drive later on. I am sure you must be aware of the rubber basement or feet that is attached to the base of the hard drive. The rubber basement just for positioning and placing the device as accordingly, all the users is supposed to place their device on support of those rubber feet. In fact Western Digital themselves have claimed that the Hard Drive that they manufacture is supposed to be kept vertically and not in any other direction. It would be much better even you keep your device in an vertical position and do not try any other testing with respect to the positioning.

I don’t think falling of the hard drive accidentally without your knowledge while keeping it in vertical position should be a reason for the change of its position. Its your device and you have to however take care of it as much as possible. How come you always knock down your hard drive? Either you must not be placing it at a safer place or you must be simply one of those careless user who do not care about their devices and products. Rather than changing the hard drive’s position it would be much better if you be a nice user and try to locate your hard drive at such a place where your hand or any oscillated thing won’t be able to knock it out anyways. Never put on your own brain and try to test the hardware products as long as you are not suggested with such things but any expert or the manufacturer of the product itself. Anyways see to it that you place your hard drive vertically, no matters what happens but also place it at the least distance above the ground surface so that you wont have any fear of the device falling from a height.

I think here everybody is interested in providing solution and clearing doubts regarding the position of the external drive. People forgot that there was also another question asked in the above thread. Must be they are not aware of the removal of smartware software. Anyways I would love to discuss about it. I guess you at least know that the smartware software can possibly be removed from the MyBook Essential hard drive. The first and the fore most things that you need to see is that the software is saved on the external drive, if it’s so then you can open up My Computer and from there you need to select the drive that is connected. Once you select the drive just right click on it and then click on the format option. Selecting the Format option might give you a window where you need to again select the option called Quick Format and after that click on the Start option. That’s it, this is what you need to do.

As I already said that you can follow the above steps only if the software is existing onto your external hard drive and if you try to format the hard drive definitely you might end up removing and clearing all the data that has been saved. Other than this regarding the hard drive position already many people have suggested you with lots of thing so I think there’s no requirement of me commenting on it.

Not from the hard drive but you can simply remove or uninstall the Western Digital Smartware software from your very own computer that runs any of the OS like Windows XP, Vista or 7 and also you can remove the same from Mac OS X. anyways as far as I know I am sure that you must be running either Windows 7 or Windows Vista into your machine or also it could be Windows XP. All in all I just need to tell you that if you are running a Windows system you can easily uninstall or remove the WD Smartware software from control panel. For your sake of convenience you can again check the whole uninstallation list for this software. you won’t find it in that place. And in case while during the un-installation process if you encounter any kind of error message then its better you contact some expert person or leave it as it is and do not try the process again.