I bought a WD My Book Essential 2 TB external drive and installed it last
night on my XP Pro PC. But either I'm missing something or there's a very
basic flaw in WD's installation procedure!

Apart from an illustration of the cables there were no instructions (and
no setup CD). That was actually what I'd hoped, as I'd read that it was a
straightforward plug-in-and-use drive.

But I immediately got the familiar Found New Hardware Wizard. I wasn't
surprised that it failed to find a driver automatically so I clicked Back
and specified the location C:\Windows\INF, which (from help here) has
worked for other USB devices before. That was successful, and I repeated
that procedure again when prompted by the wizard about the next new
hardware, the USB drive itself, and that also was OK. (It failed for the
third component, 'WES', something to do with its Smart Software facility,
which I don't want anyway.)

But, of course, it was only after the above that I was able to read the
User Guide PDF on the drive. And in that I see

"4. If a Found New Hardware screen appears, click Cancel to close it.
The WD SmartWare software that is on the drive installs the proper driver
for your My Book drive."

Obviously I couldn't know that until I'd installed the drive - Catch 22!!

So my first question: is that just WD being incredibly daft?

More important, how should I now proceed for the best? The drivers now
installed are built-in ones from 2001, according to Device Manager
WD My Book 1140 USB Device:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\disk.sys
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PartMgr.sys

Should I now try to update to the WD drivers? Even though I don't want
this Smart Software stuff? (That seem to be just a backup/restore app -
more to learn, that I can live without.)

In particular, do you think using the WD drivers would improve speed?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK