Regarding the other issue that WD Smartware tries to access the internet, there is nothing wrong with that as the software needs to access the internet in order to find out if there are any updates available. No other data is transmitted to or received from through this communication and from what I have seen this connection is attempted only once; specifically whenever I start my computer. In my case the IP Address WD Smartware is trying to contact is 129.253.170.35:HTTP. Although I have not granted WD Smartware the right to contact this address at will, whenever my firewall informs me that Smartware tries to contact this address, I always allow it.