3Tb My Book Essential not working with W7 PRO 64-bit

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

Hi, I just bought a new laptop Sony Vaio and a new 3Tb My Book Essential, Model: WDBACW0030HBK-NESN.

While attempting to take a system image of the laptop from Windows (W7 PRO 64-bit ) it repeatedly fails with an I/O error.:manmad:

I went back and exchanged the HDD to see if it was the WD-HDD error. But again I got the I/O error with this 2nd WD-HDD.:angry:

I was able to create a system image on my another 1Tb My Book Essential, so it is not a problem with the laptop.

I have also installed the SES drive, and the HDD is visible and accessible through windows. I could read/write to the HDD.

What should I do now?
is it ok to conclude that 3Tb don’t work properly with W7 PRO or something else.

please help me out.

thanks,
Grr

2

Hi,

I did all of the following to see if it would help;

  1. did a format to NTFS

  2. Stripped to 2Tb

  3. Stripped to 1Tb

Still the same case, error.

Appreciate if someone could help out.

thanks,

Grr

3

Out of curiousity did you go to windows updates? Also check for optional updates. I can’t find it but there was a windows patch a while ago to allow drives above 2t I can’t remember which version of windows it was for.

Joe

4

No, not yet.

I’m waiting to create an image before I connect my new laptop to internet.

5

Are you connecting with USB2.0 or 3.0?

Joe

6

Connecting using USB 2.0.

7

Got the same problem. At first I suspected an issue with my USB 3.0 connection (card, driver, etc.) but using USB 2.0 did not help. I also had the problem with a 2nd drive of the same type, so it is not an isolated incident. I got what looks like file system corruption (files not found/can’t create new files) when the disk was about half full. Reformatting didn’t solve the problem. Out of frustration, and since I was running out of ideas, I took the drive out of the enclosure and connected it directly via SATA. (Note: if you do that, the disk will appear empty, probably due to the encryption, so you won’t be able to access your precious data any more… Make a backup first!) I changed the partition type from MBR to GPT and reformatted the disk in NTFS. It is now working like a charm. I suppose that this problem is related to MBR’s 2 TiB limit and whatever WD did to work around it. Or maybe the USB 3.0/SATA interface. Or the encryption. I don’t really care as long as the disk itself is sane. (I got the MyBook cheaper than an OEM disk, so I can’t complain.) I can’t believe that WD would sell a product as buggy as this. Next time I’ll buy an OEM disk and put it inside a 3rd-party enclosure with e-SATA or Firewire 800.

8

Hi Diabolo,

Thanks for confirming that it’s the same case with you.

I’m returning the drive back.

hope WD would be able to provide good 3Tb drives in future.

Thanks,

Grr

9

I think I havesome insitght on this now. It has to do with Windows 2T limit. Look throught this link http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/02/18/understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx  It explains some and gets into GPT that is necessary. Here is how another poster reformatted http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/Problem-re-partitioning-3TB-My-Book-Essential/td-p/116048

Joe

10

Thanks Joe.

It was worth reading to know the limitations.

I hope WD would soon come up with an alert for such limitations, as the 3Tb drives are in the market and many users have reported problems.

Thanks,

Grr