Aa far as I can tell.... this is only the case if you use the "WD Anywhere Access" software that comes with the drive...
Normally... when connecting a disk drive to a PC it is windows that controls the resources. However, using a third party program like WD Anywhere Access would change some of those rules...
Just don't use the software... Or better. don't use WD disks...
I was a BIGTIME fan of WD before. But by comparing different disk drives from other vendors... WD really has nothing to offer that is better than other disks.
WD uses smaller cache on most of their disks. And never made pATA 133, they stuck with ATA 100...
(for those still using these drives...)
One exception may be the raptor disks.
However i have not tried/tested them...