Advantages to Western Digital Mac Turbo Driver?

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Level 1

66 points

Advantages to Western Digital Mac Turbo Driver?

I purchased a My Book Essential Edition 640 GB external during Black Friday ($70, what a steal!), and have been running it with a Mac driver that is available on the Western Digital website.

Though I know you do not need a driver in order to operate it on a Mac, does anyone know what (if any) advantages there are to using this Mac driver?

I tested out the connect time for the external hard drive to connect to my MacBook, and it was slower when running the driver (1 minute 29 seconds with Driver, 1 minute 6 seconds without Driver).

So what's the deal?

 2nd Gen MacBook (2.16Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo / 2GB RAM / 160GB Harddrive) , Mac OS X (10.4.11),  20 GB Partitioned Hard Drive, Wireless Mighty Mouse, 30 GB iPod Video 

Posted on Feb 1, 2009 11:22 AM

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Answer 1

DonH49

Level 6

16,716 points

Feb 1, 2009 3:02 PM in response to Hyde244

I guess you should ask WD techs , eh?

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Answer 2

Feb 1, 2009 7:02 PM in response to DonH49

Hi,

I think it boils down to mostly a marketing benefit for WD, as one of the things the installer does is to make sure the drive icon is customized with WD icon. MacWold tested a WD My Passport, and found the real world performance was only improved about 6% with the tweaked driver.

Were it I, I wouldn't bother installing the WD driver in deference to keeping my MacBook close to a factory software configuration. Not using the WD driver removes something that AppleCare can blame if one experiences Wi-Fi issues, keyboard lock-ups, etc. Knock-on-wood that won't be necessary.

-Bill

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Answer 3

Hyde244 Author

Level 1

66 points

Feb 4, 2009 1:19 PM in response to impulse_telecom

Thanks impulse, that's the exact type of article I've been looking for!

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