WD20EARS just added on the official HCL - mistake and issues

Like others on this forum, I recently purchased a pair of WDC WD20EARS-00S8B1 to go with my new ReadyNAS Duo (I previously had a reliable D Link DNS-323 but the 500Gb storage was getting tight and I wanted the Squeezebox functionality of the ReadyNAS). I diligently checked the HCL before purchasing: the 2Tb beauties were listed. Since installing the system, I've had pretty much the same experience as others here - repeated ATA error count notifications, plus a steadily increasing Load Cycle Count (had the disks 3 days and they're each at 1957 and 1658 respectively. In addition, the UPnP streaming performance from the Duo to my PS3 was decidedly under par.

To cut a long story short, my ATA error count woes seem to have been solved through an upgrade to the T29 beta firmware. This also seems to have improved the streaming performance. However, having read everything on this thread, and others, including CommanderQ's really helpful post, it seems I need to take action via WD's WDIDLE3 utility. The snag is that I've recently disposed of my Windows PC, and have only a windows laptop and a Macbook available from which to undertake the firmware tweak. Has anyone experience of running WDIDLE3 successfully with a hard drive plugged in via a caddy and USB connection either from Windows run under Virtualbox on MacOS or via a Windows XP laptop?

Thanks in advance!