After calling WD Tech Support and getting escalated to Tier II, I was told that I have the “Mini” Virtual CD, and there is no way to disable this. I found a KB article that talks about removing it, but it didn’t work. I bought a My Book Essentials for home use, and it always puts the WD Unlocker on my desktop. If you do have a password set, you won’t be able to unlock the drive without installing the SES driver – all you’d be able to do is remove the password from the drive at home and try again. If you don’t have a password set, you should just be able to skip the SES driver. It seems much more likely that it’s the SES driver of which the school is blocking the installation. RG’s PC, doesn’t show up when plugged into the WDTV, doesn’t show up when plugged into the WDTV Live. That’s the way it works for me… the hidden Smartware VCD doesn’t show up on this PC, doesn’t show up when plugged into the Server, doesn’t show up when plugged into Mrs. If it’s a Smartware VCD, then if you install the firmware patch to hide the VCD, it should stay hidden for all devices the drive is attached to.

WD can’t force the school to install the Unlocker application on their computers. If the school PC’s won’t allow the Unlocker application to run, all you can do is remove the password from the drive. The Unlocker VCD remains hidden unless you set a password, and hides itself again when you remove a password, but it cannot be removed from the drive. Is it a “WD Unlocker” VCD or a “WD Smartware” VCD?

Unlock wd my passport on ubuntu