My hard drive wants me to register with a name & email. I

>My hard drive wants me to register with a name & email
U wot? Post pics. If you're using Windows, stop acting surprised.

>>57879585
Just reformat it

>>57879585
What kind of hard drive? Is it an actual bare HDD you bought and installed yourself (in which case I can't fathom how it could be asking for your data, unless HDDs have fancy EFI-style firmware of their own these days), or have you bought an external HDD that comes with an enclosure and some custom software to access its contents?

>>57880124
Portable external HDD. There's a .exe that just redirects to their sign up page with 0 explanation. I only care because i might be throwing away the warranty by not signing up.

>>57880157
seagate is the worst. return it while you can.
>source: i do data recovery all day long (some days)

>>57880157
I think my external hard drive that's still in use from from ~3 years ago had something like that. I just moved the exe to my old (and now unused) laptop and forgot about it.

>>57880157
Solution: don't run the exe

>>57880191
This.
>tfw you are trusting your data on a product made by people who cant manage to make a halfway usable executable

also mfw cfdisk tells me my 16gb flashdrive has several terabyes of unused space

>>57880230
It will if you download more space.

copy everything in the root directory of your hd to another folder.

when you connect the drive it runs the "autorun.inf" file which sends you to that page.

nothing to do with warranty if you dont register. they just mine your info and spam your email with new products.

>>57880157
format it, there is no magic inside, just couple of hidden files.

>>57880172
aw. I just bought my first external hard drives ever last week for backup purposes, LaCie's orange buffered minis. I was very annoyed to find that I needed to do installation and such in order for the drive to work, rather than it just working out of the box excepting driver installation.

are there any portable hard drives that are reliable and will not need extra installations to work?

The best approach is to buy a drive of your choice and an enclosure separately.

>>57880172
Who's fucking harddrives can I trust? I thought Seagate was one of the good ones but that's likely outdated information.

>>57880230
elohel
>>tfw you are trusting your data on a product made by people who cant manage to make a halfway usable executable

I mean, the .exe works, but all it does is link to their page and check a hidden file for my drive's serial number.

>>57880896
>when you connect the drive it runs the "autorun.inf" file which sends you to that page.

Nothing autoruns on my computer, I just manually used the "StartHere.exe" to see if it was going to offer the syncing bullshit.

>nothing to do with warranty if you dont register. they just mine your info and spam your email with new products.

This is what I needed. Thanks.

>>57882955
Fuck. You're right.

Recommended enclosures? I may just return this and get a small form-factor 4TB drive + enclosure.


>>57881071
Most won't require anything more than the drivers.

>>57884330
just use a samsung drive and a rosewill enclosure

>>57884330
>I mean, the .exe works, but all it does is link to their page and check a hidden file for my drive's serial number.

I was speaking in a general sense. Ive had flashdrives and my seagate harddrives software that seems buggy as shit.
The flashdrives stuff was mostly usless and bloat and they partition the fucking flash drive to make room for their bloat and when opinion youd actually get.

my 2tb external seagate, works fine, I used it from about 2010 - 2014 when it maxed off I just unplugged it, the data is still there so its one of the good drives.
The software that came with it however was retarded. The drive didnt want to actually turn on, and getting it to wake from sleep was a pain in the ass.
The drive works perfectly fine without the software, the only thing youd want that for is putting the drive into sleep mode, BUT the disc never actually spins down, it just keeps turning and turning and turning all through the night until you actually pull the power plug.

>>57879585
Obviously you've never heard of disposable email addresses. If enough people used them either they'd be outlawed or the demand for credentials would be modified.

>>57887960
Oh. Fuck.

>>57889182
>Obviously you've never heard of disposable email addresses.
>disposable email addresses
>to register your warranty

>>57890017
>implying the warranty is worth a shit anyway