Uninstalled WD SES Device USB Device appears in device manager with Western Digital Passport ‘Smartware’ enabled device

System Requirements:

  • Western Digital Smartware enabled USB device

The Problem:

When you install a Western Digital USB hard drive an uninstalled device appears in “other devices” in the Windows device manager.

More Info

The WD SES Device USB Device is a enclosure communication and feedback device which, when enabled allows the USB enclosure to communicate additional metrics about the state of the equipment. In this case, the USB enclosure is the USB Caddy containing the 2.5″ drive.

SES stands for SCSI Enclosure Services, which provide extensions to the SCSI command set to allow for reporting and querying of data such as power consumption and state and cooling performance and thermal state within the caddy. The commands are used for diagnostic purposes and are not required in the functionality of the drive or data I/O itself.

You can continue to use the drive without this driver installed. In the case of Western Digital, its main purpose is to facilitate value added features in the Smartware management software.

The Fix

You can find the driver on the 614MB UDF partition that appears with the data storage volume in My Computer. Point the driver installation Wizard at the UDF partition, or more specifically to X:\Extras\WD SES Device Driver where X: is the mounted driver letter for the UDF partition labeled “WD SmartWare”.

The WD SES Driver version shipping with drives containing WD Smartware 1.2.0.8 and with the update (3.1.0.13) available from wdc.com is version 1.0.7.2. It is available for both x86 and x64 systems.