How many My Book customers would even understand the meaning of your [correct] advice? When companies fuck people over with a defective product, we should resist the urge to tell the victims to be more tech savvy and not use those sort of products. Particularly when those products are intended for the general public.

It's always the same old thing. But the fundamental problem will never vanish: computers are complex, and no matter how hard you try with neat packaging and software, this complexity cannot be hidden. Sooner or later the illusion bursts at its seams and the user discovers another failure mode that they weren't even aware of.

WD really messed up there - but they and others will mess up again, so if the user's goal is not losing any data they'll still need to do more than buy the next shiny thing and click "accept" on the EULA. Because in the end pushing around the blame won't get you the files back.

I don't think it's a "computers are hard" problem. I think it's a "corporation sold a defective product" problem. Well charted territory.

Problem is that whoever designed the system should have done a better job. Computers are still (and probably will always remain) a niche skill so the blame lies completely on the shoulders of the WD engineers/designers who left this option open on the device