Western Digital or Seagate Barracuda?!

Hi,
I would like to purchase an additional 250gb ATA drive for my 1.25ghz G4 MDD. I previously posted on here regarding the better of the two between the Seagate or Hitach drives, but I have now ruled out the Hitachi. However, I am now divided between the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 and the Western Digital Caviar SE. I would like to know peoples recommendations/experiences with these drives. It really is important that the drive is reliable, fast and also very quiet (all of which these drives claim to be). I did read a review that the Barracuda 7200.10 drive made a pecking noise when being accessed and therefore I would like to know if anyone else has noticed this.
All feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Hi-
The 7200.10 series has been plagued by firmware problems that can cause slow read or write speeds in a Power Mac (or Mac Pro for that matter). Though most reports concern the SATA version, I am concerned with the 7200.10 and the native controller of a Mac. If the drive were the 7200.9, then I give it 5 thumbs up...
I have a WD Caviar in a QS G4. Very nice, very quiet (virtually silent). Makes a small "click" (very small) when sleeping or shutting down, but this is due to the the automatic head park mechanism doing what it was designed to do (nice feature). I really like the drive. You may be interested in this article. The conclusion says it all.

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External Hard Drive Western digital or Seagate?

Looking to buy a External Hard drive for my new imac and just wondering anybody had any experience with both these companies and which one would be the best option to go for:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Essential-External-Desktop-Drive/dp/B0047VOGOO/ref= sr_1_18?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1363649454&sr=1-18#productDetai ls
or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STCA2000200-Backup-Desktop-Drive/dp/product-desc ription/B0084LZI9U/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=340831031&s=computers

I have/had a WD MyBook Studio Mac Edition. In spite of that moniker, it performed badly on both a PowerPC and and Intel Mac. I stripped the bare WD drive out of the WD enclosure and put it in a a Mercury Elite enclosure that's the model offered just before the one den.thed linked, and it works flawlessly.
The problem is with the WD enclosures, not the drives inside. The same drive that ran hot in the WD enclosure runs just barely warm to the touch in the nice metal OWC case. I now have two WD drives in OWC enclosures and can't complain.
PS: I reformatted the WD drive with Disk Utility after getting it into the OWC case. Either the chipset WD used in teh case was wonky or they used some strange formatting that made it appear only as an non-resolvable alias on the desktop. Now it's fine.

Western Digital or Seagate?

currently own a external WD 1.5TB External for 2 years now and its did good for me,but im getting another one but which brand should i go with and what brand is better?

I second macjack's recommendation for OWC (macsales.com) - excellent enclosure, drive, and quiet.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

External FW/USB Western Digital, Seagate Disk Drives and 'Sleep' function

As you are aware, most external disk drives be they FW or USB (and irrespective of the manufacturer, save for LaCie) have a 'sleep' function built into their Firmware. In the case of the Western Digital and Seagate Ext FW drives I have, this function cannot be disabled and this per both WD and Seagate.
Unfortunately this is extremely annoying if using Photoshop and Bridge...it takes about ten seconds for each disk to spin up while the latter programs search the drives. (In Windows this can be enabled/disabled. Not so with the Mac O/S I have been told). Multiply this by six of the aforementioned drives and it can be quite time consuming.
Is there an OS-X workaround for this?
Thanks again,
Lyman

I always avoid vendor cases. Might want to look at an Oxford 912 etc, or better yet, why use Firewire when eSATA works so well?

I want to purchase a two terabyte external hard drive to utilise Time Machine on my new iMac....but which one? Western Digital, Time Capsule, Seagate? Any advice would be most welcome please.

I want to purchase a two terabyte external hard drive to utilise Time Machine on my new iMac....but which one? Western Digital, Time Capsule, Seagate? Any advice would be most welcome please. Thanks Phil

If you are looking for high quality drives and enclosures I'd recommend these 3:
http://g-technology.com/products/g-drive.cfm
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10330
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
I use the LaCie's, I've got three connected to my system and a 4th acting as my TM drive on my MacBook Air. Any of the above would be welcome on my desk though.

My iMac Seagate 1T hard drive crashed. I replaced it with a Western Digital 1T hard drive. Where can I get the Lion OS?

My iMac Seagate 1T hard drive crashed. I replaced it with a Western Digital 1T hard drive. Where can I get the Lion OS?
The iMac comes up with a ? in a folder, even after starting with Option/Command/R keys pressed.
Please help.

Call Apple to purchase replacement discs or order a copy of Snow Leopard from Apple's Online Store. Follow these instructions:
Drive Preparation and Install Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
7. When completed quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard. Once you boot from Snow Leopard you should open Software Update and install all the available updates required. After you complete this and restart the computer open the App Store application in the Dock or Applications folder.
8. Sign into the App Store with your Apple ID and password. Purchase and download Lion.
9. After Lion's installer downloads, install Lion.

Want to get a new HDD - Seagate or Western Digital?

Hi everyone. My MacBook Pro's 200 GB Hitachi drive (Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00) has reached it's maximum. I'd like to swap it out for a larger disk... preferably a 500 GB 7200 RPM drive. I called a local shop that was highly recommended by the Apple store here in Atlanta and that shop recommended/carried only Seagate or Western Digital. I'm not sure what the model numbers are for the two drives but they quoted me a price of 109 USD.
Of the two drives, which would you recommend and why? The only difference I know of is that Western Digital has a 3 year warranty while the Seagate drive has a 5 year warranty.
Also, do you see any problem/reason why I should not go this route? My MacBook Pro was purchased in 2006 and is way past it's warranty at this point. I have a G-Drive Mini but don't really feel like having an external drive attached every time I use my computer (as my iTunes library is the main reason why I need the space). I'd prefer to have a larger internal disk.
Thanks for all of your help/recommendations!
Sincerely,
Keith

Why aren't you also considering Hitachi drives for replacements? IMO they also make great drives. I upgraded my ALPB with a 7200rpm Hitachi drives years ago, and while the PB has died, the drive is still running strong in an external enclosure. I also have an old TIPB running with a 7200rpm Seagate drive that has been going for years with no problems. Both are great. I know it's old technology as both are PATA and only 100GB, but I do recall an article where both were tested and while the Hitachi offered generally better (though minimal) transfer rates, the Seagate had the higher areal density which made for quicker access times. The Seagate was also dead silent compared to the Hitachi.
Personally, I've had poor experience with Western Digital drives over the years. Not to say they don't make a good product, but my personal experience has been less than satisfactory. Seagate drives have always worked well for me, as have Hitachi, in both 2.5" and 3.5" forms. If you are absolute in WD or Seagate, I personally would take the Seagate. Also, instead of going through your local shop, why not take a look at Newegg.com? They have a large selection of 7200rpm laptop drives and you may very well get a better price. I.E, Newegg has several Seagate Momentus 7200.4 drives (500GB) ranging from $79.99 to $99.99 and a Hitachi Tavelstar 7K500 for $84.99 (they don't seem to carry a 500GB 7200rpm WD).
G

What is the best Harddrive company to install into my 2008 Macbook, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Samsung?

The HDD in my 2008 MacBook just failed on me, and the Genius' at the store said I just need to purchase and install a new HDD and they will install Mac OS X for me for free. I was looking around and I found a few HDD but I'm not familar with Mac HDD I dont know if there is a specific company that i NEED to use, or if i can install any HDD fom any company. Obviously i know i need a 2.5" Form Factor HDD with SATA 3.0/Gbps but which company should i purchase....
Seagte
Hitachi
Western Digital
Samsung
All ive found decent sized HDD at very reasonable prices.
Thank you for your responses

If you search through all the Mac forums on the internet you'll find that people say "Never put a (Insert name of company here) hard drive in your MacBook, only put a (Insert name of company here) drive in."
That's because every company makes drives that can fail quickly and drives that can go forever. They all try the best that they can to make a good drive.
Go with the one that has the best warranty for the price.

Internal HDs: Seagate or Western Digital?

Looking at 750 gb to 1tb internal hard drives, Is there one drive recommended over the other for non RAID use?
Advice/Comments appreciated.

PS1,
I prefer Western Digital drives.
You can pick up a WD 750GB SATA drive for $140. I prefer the RE2 SATA drives from Western Digital because they are enterprise class and they have a 5 year warranty, instead of the standard 3 year. A WD RE2 750GB drive is only $190.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntt=WD%20SATA%203%2E5%20Hard%20Drive %20Internal&Ntk=Primary&N=0&Ns=P_Price%7c0
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD7500AYYS/
Keith

Cloning WinXP onto Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA hard disk

Greetings everybody!
I recently wanted to clone my existing (perfectly working) Windows XP Home boot hard disk onto a brand new 320 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA drive, model ST3320620AS. The existing boot C-disk is a 250 GB Western Digital SATA, which is in my Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo P (the CPU being an AMD Athlon 64 3700+). The motherboard is an ASUS A8NE-FM with the SATA interface being a NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller.
I struggled quite a bit getting the cloned Seagate SATA disk to work as a Windows XP boot drive, but eventually got it working – using Acronis True Image Home version 9, build 3.854 (http://www.acronis.com/). Here’s how I eventually succeeded; hope it may be useful to others! ( - and I of course realize that ASUS motherboards are not made by MSI, but at the same time I have seen several MSI-users reporting similar difficulties…).
A small hint: You may download, at no cost, a full-functioning version of “Acronis True Image 10 Home”, usable for a 15 days trial period (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/). If you can manage to clone your hard disk within this period, well, it’ll be completely free! A free Windows XP clone utility, which I don’t know how well functions, is XXclone, see http://xxclone.com/.
Here’s how I did (there may be other ways, but, well, this worked for me):
1) First mounted the Seagate ST3320620AS as the D-drive (the C-drive being the Western Digital boot drive). Kept Seagate factory-default jumper setting (“Limit data transfer rate to 1.5 Gbits per second “). Booted up, went into the BIOS (being Nvidia 42302e31 Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00PG according to ”System Info for Windows” from http://www.gtopala.com/ ), and configured the Seagate drive as follows: Second Master SATA HDD, Extended IDE Drive: Auto, Access Mode: Large (NB: Do NOT select ”Auto” here!!), Capacity: 320 GB, Cylinder: 4095, Head: 240, Precomp: 0, Landing Zone: 65534, Sector: 255. Save configuration and exit BIOS.
2) Booted up on the old Western Digital C-drive. Used Seagate’s DiscWizard to format and partition the ST3320620AS (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard). The drive was formatted NTFS (4k block size, and one single partition). This went smooth (Windows XP however complained of some of the Seagate drivers not being ”WHQL certified” – just continued, anyway). Then right-clicked on ”My Computer" --> "Manage" --> ”Computer Management” --> ”Disk Management”. Right-clicked on the Seagate disk, then clicked ”Mark Partition as Active”. The Seagate drive is now seen in Windows as drive D, and is ready for use.
3) Ran Acronis True Image Home ver. 9, build 3.854 and cloned the Western Digital disk onto the Seagate. This went smooth and took less than five minutes (data amount on the Western Digital C-drive, containing Windows XP Home, \Program Files, \Documents and Settings and not much else, being approx. 10 GB). Impressing fast cloning! Exit and shut-down.
4) Removed the Western Digital drive from the PC, keeping only the new Seagate disk. Booted, went into BIOS, configured the boot drive as the Seagate: First or Second Master SATA HDD (according to what SATA cable is being used), Extended IDE Drive: Auto, Access Mode: Large (NB: Do NOT select ”Auto” here!!), Capacity: 320 GB, Cylinder: 4095, Head: 240, Precomp: 0, Landing Zone: 65534, Sector: 255. Save and exit BIOS.
5) Booted into Windows XP Home on the newly cloned Seagate SATA drive. Success!! End of story!
THANKS to several of ASUS forum users help!
Best regards,
Johan
Copenhagen
Denmark
NOTE the there seems to be an error in some of the ASUS motherboards (or in the BIOS?), incl. the A8NE-FM, which makes it impossible to boot from an apparently successfully Windows XP cloned Seagate SATA drive unless first having set the ”Access Mode” in the BIOS to ”Large” before formatting and cloning. Some also claim that NCQ for the Seagate drive must be disabled; I have not done this and the cloned drive boots and works perfectly with NCQ enabled. (NB: If not setting ”Access Mode” to ”Large”, but if keeping the default BIOS setting of ”Auto”, then it is perfectly possible to both format, partition, set active and clone onto the drive. When attempting to boot using the cloned drive one gets this message: ”Error loading operating system” (or in Danish: ”Fejl ved indlæsning af operativsystem”). Further links discussing this issue:
SATA boot problem: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060822025446574&board_id=1&model=A8N-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
Cannot boot from SATA drive: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20061109224813953&board_id=1&model=A8N-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
Problem with installing XP on 320 GB HDD: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060622193708298&board_id=1&model=A8N-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
Seagate SATAII disk unable to boot: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060518000042851&board_id=1&model=A8N-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
A8N-E, SATA and XP Professional Installation: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20060327192440824&board_id=1&model=A8N-E&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

"NOTE the there seems to be an error in some of the ASUS motherboards (or in the BIOS?), incl. the A8NE-FM, which makes it impossible to boot from an apparently successfully Windows XP cloned Seagate SATA drive unless first having set the ”Access Mode” in the BIOS to ”Large” before formatting and cloning. Some also claim that NCQ for the Seagate drive must be disabled; I have not done this and the cloned drive boots and works perfectly with NCQ enabled. (NB: If not setting ”Access Mode” to ”Large”, but if keeping the default BIOS setting of ”Auto”, then it is perfectly possible to both format, partition, set active and clone onto the drive. When attempting to boot using the cloned drive one gets this message: ”Error loading operating system” (or in Danish: ”Fejl ved indlæsning af operativsystem”). Further links discussing this issue:"
that links are useless(for MSI owners), its described bug into BIOS which cannot determinate property HDD access mode. its specified problem related to this Asus board and specific BIOS version. exactly same problem happend and arrive with Gigabyte board after update BIOS to the latest one which suppose to fix "some things" and totally unexpected in background comes this issue..... seems some of Asus BIOSes got same issue...
MSI boards doesn't have this issue in any BIOS version.

Seagate barracuda 3Tb life expectancy is 2 years - Don't buy it.

Seagate barracuda 3Tb life expectancy is 2 years; confirmed by www.seagate.com customer service. All the tools and applications developed by Seagate are made to detect or recover data. So, they know the junk they have and they make money upon data recovery.This is how it went: purchased the hard drive, downloaded their software to set the partitions, then, after about 2 years, my Windows 7 64bit crashed trying to gather info from one of the partitions. Contacted their support and even if their hard drive still in warranty, they will not helped me. They told me to contact their "data recovery" division to help me. Well, I have called them 1-800-Seagate and they told me to send the hard drive to their lab and the charge will be 550 Pounts (aprox. 700USD). This is not admissible to have a hardware that will last 2 years....If any of the Seagate team members reads this, please don't try to deny. I have promised you that I will make the world know your type of business you're doing.

lol why don't you complain to "Seagate" .... this is a "Western Digital" Forum / Website I only buy Western Digital HDD's now after SOO Many "Seagate" aka "Shіtgate" HDD failures (3 last year) Have not had any Western Digital HDD failure over 5-6 years (but, i always keep a backup ... i'm not silly)

MSI KT3 ultra aru Western Digital 200GB raid problem

Hi!
This is what I've got.
KT3 Ultra-ARU (MS-6380E)
AMD 2000+
256 MB 333mhz RAM (AMD Compatible)
Seagate ST330630A 30GB (an old drive)
Maxtor 6L080J4 80GB
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 6Y080L0 80Gb 7200rpm 2Mb UDMA133 Fluid IDE
Western Digital Caviar WD1800JB 180Gb 7200rpm Special Edition UDMA100 IDE
Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB 200Gb 7200rpm Special Edition UDMA100 IDE
Promise 100 IDE-controller
Creative Geforce MX 440
Lite-on LTR-40125W
NEC ND-1300 DVD
And the configuration:
IDE1: Seagate (Master)
IDE2: WD1800BG (Cabel Select)
IDE3(Raid1): Maxtor 6LO80J4 (Master) and Maxtor 6Y080L0 (Slave) raided as an single drive
IDE4(Raid2): WD2000JB (Cable Select)
IDE5(IDE-controller1):
IDE6(IDE-controller2): NEC ND-1300 (Master) and Lite-on LTR-40125W (Slave)
And the Software:
I've updated all the software drivers so I've got the newest and I'm currently runnign Win2k SP3 with almost every patch installed on it.
And finally the problem:
When I've hook my WD2000JB to the on-board raid everything seems to be working normaly. The bios finds the drive and makes a new array. Win2k boots up and finds the drive and I can create an partition. But when I've try to format it it the computer starts to freeze for a while and then acts like normal again. The HDD-led blinks as it should during the "normal" time, but when the comp. freezes it stops blinking. The formatation stops at 7% and the HDD-led stops lighting. I don't get an error eventhough it was several hours since it stoped. And the formatation takes like 30min for 1%.
When I connect the WD2000JB to the IDE3 I can format it and it acts just like normal. I even did a full system test with the System tool found on Western Digitals support site and it didn't find any errors. But when move it to the raid-IDE the errors return. I've get Error reading / writing to disk and when I've did a chkdsk I've got the "Coudn't use Device) so I did a scandisk and it found very very many errors so it completly ereased everything that was on it.
And when I've run Western Digitals program again i've get an error (Disk error read/writing) error code: 0113.
Can it be that the Western Disk doesn't work well with Raid? I've haven't heard anything about that, so...
Best regars,
Mathias

You can have a look at my hardware below...
Chassis: Antec 1080B (300w PSU / 180w COMBINED)
Mainboard: MSI KT3 Ultra ARU
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Display: ABIT Siluro GF4 Ti4200 AGP 4X
DVD/CD-RW Combo: HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4120B
Floppy: Panasonic 1.44MB
HD: Quantum Fireball Plus/AS 30.0GB UDMA 100
Keyboard: Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Monitor: KDS Visual Sensations VS-190
Mouse: Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical
NICs: 3Com 3C900B / DLink DFE-530TX
RAM: Micron DDR 266MHz (2x256MB DIMMs)
Sound: Avance AC'97 Audio
I've had similar problems where my system becomes very unstable at higher bus speeds. Installing Windows XP simply didn't work very good. However, I have ordered a new PSU today as a solution to this problem. Basically, CPUs and video cards are much more demanding and the more devices you have in your computer the more power you're going to need. I recommend purchasing the Enermax EG465P-VE (FCA) 450W ATX PS. It has a higher amperage rating and will most likely solve your problem.
Check your PSU and your bus speed settings...

Will a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive fit into my 12" PB

Hi all,
Done some searching on the forum but i can't find the correct info. So here goes my current 60gb HD is full so i need a much bigger one.
I have found one on a UK web site a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400rpm 8MB Cache for a good price http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132386/showproductspecifications
,this seems to be the biggest i can find. Will it fit and work correctly?? It is 7 cm x 10 cm x 9.5 mm
On this forum i can only find details of a 160GB seagate being fitted (this one i assume Seagate ST9160821A 160GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400RPM 8MB Cache ??)
Have i got the IDE bit right or do i need a SATA, both listed as mac compatible but which one?
Thanks for your help
Phil

Done some searching on the forum but i can't find the correct info. So here goes my current 60gb HD is full so i need a much bigger one.
Have you considered an external hard drive, so you can back up your current system plus use it for additional storage? If it needs to be portable, you can get any size 2.5" drive and put it in a firewire case, for example http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go (it's a US store, but you get the idea). You would need either a firewire or combined firewire/USB case, as our Powerbooks can only boot from a firewire device.
I have found one on a UK web site a Western Digital 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive IDE 5400rpm 8MB Cache for a good price http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132386/showproductspecifications
,this seems to be the biggest i can find. Will it fit and work correctly??
Yes, it will fit. There has been some question recently whether the Powerbook bios (that's a Windows term, so the Apple equivalent) will support a drive that large. While it shouldn't be a problem, I'd want to confirm that someone else has one installed.
Have i got the IDE bit right or do i need a SATA, both listed as mac compatible but which one?
You're correct that you want an ATA/IDE drive. Our Powerbooks cannot use SATA drives, which are used in the current Apple notebooks.

Western Digital External Hard drive keeps undocking when running time machine.

I have been using a 2TB Western Digital My Book external hard drive for about a year now to run time machine and backup my files. The past month I have noticed that my backups have been failing. I try and for a backup and about halfway through it gets "delayed" because of an error. Then I have a alert pop up on my desktop with the following message:
The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off.
The disk was not unplugged from the power supply or the usb port. I am stumped. Anyone know what is going on and how to fix it??

I would avoid WD, Seagate, LaCie, and Iomega external drives, and any drive with special features such as networking or built-in backup software.

Time machine backup fails; error creating folder. Western Digital drive requires password which is perhaps/likely the issue. I can't eliminate the password/encryption.

Time Machine backup fails on new WD external drive (My Passport Studio); error creating folder (after several hours of Time Machine apparently working).
Background: I purchased a Western Digital drive from an Apple Store to use for Time Machine backup. I followed the Western Digital instructions that came with the drive for Mac. I didn't get the Time Machine prompt which the instructions indicated I would receive--namely to select whether I want to encrypt my Time Macine backups. (I already have a Time Machine backup I use at another location, which is perhaps why I didn't receive a prompt.)
I decided to install the Western Digital utilities and security software that comes on the disk--with a view to potentially encrypting the disk (since I still wanted to have an encrypted backup since I was mobile). I forgot that (from experience 2-years previous) that I shouldn't install Western Digital software because it just makes life really complicated.
I tried several times to do a Time Machine backup with failures each time (error creating the backup folder). I tried to get help from WD but I don't think the technicians were following what my issue was. Potentially I was not helpful in explaining it. I deleted the WD applications from my system after the first contact with WD. However the problem persisted--I still had an encrypted hard drive. After three phone sessions with three different WD techs I still could not get a solution. (By the second call I was not at all interested in having an encrypted drive--I just wanted to format and restore the drive to an unencrypted state so that I could have SOME kind of Time Machine backup.)
I still don't have a solution--either to get Time Machine working with the WD encryption/password on the drive, or to remove the encryption so I can backup. Right now my options are to return the drive to the Apple Store -- or get a return authorization from WD. Seems crazy since the drive is fine and I have the working password.

Never install "helpful software" provided by WD and Seagate (or any HD mfg.)
All such stuff is fluff and nonsense that interferes with normal HD operation.
Always when you buy a new HD, format it for Mac and then use it to TM backup or clone a HD, or archive data.
Less is more on HD new out of box. A "blank brick", no fluff and cotton candy software

Western Digital or Seagate Barracuda?!

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