Like a lot of you, I’ve added a variety of Western Digital external hard disks to my setup, from Worldbooks to MyBooks to the Passports. My initial experiences weren’t great but have gotten better over time.

I recently discovered that the folks at WD have made updates to their Mac software to increase throughput through USB and Firewire and updated the firmware on several of the drives. Go to www.wdc.com and click the support link. Choose downloads and pick your drive from the listings. Pictures are provided since the name isn’t anywhere on the drive I can find.

Performance with the new drivers is better and drives that would “vanish” in the past are now there consistently. If you have WD drives, update them, you’ll be happy.