I got a My Book Premium drive that I can’t see in Windows Vista 64-bit or in Windows XP Professional SP2. I plug in the power cord, and when I plug in the USB cable to the computer it powers up (the front light comes on and I can hear it), but it doesn’t show up under My Computer.
I downloaded and installed the “My Book Premium Edition Software (Including WD Backup)”.
I ran the “WD Diagnostics” utility on both XP and Vista, but it did not see the external drive, only my local computer hard drive.
I ran “My Computer : Manage : Storage : Disk Management” on both XP and Vista, but did not see the drive.
I ran NirSoft’s USBDeview that shows all connected USB devices, and it is not in the list.
On the WD Support site, it says that Windows XP and Windows Vista require additional drivers, and when I go to the Downloads page, the only drivers listed are the Windows 98SE driver and the FireWire driver, so I understand this to mean that no additional driver is necessary for XP or Vista.
My friend used this drive for a long time successfully making backups of her Windows XP laptop. After she plugged it into a Windows 7 machine, she can’t see any of her backups on the drive. So now I’m hooking it up to my machines to see if I can see anything on it.
I’m suspecting that the drive is faulty. I’m thinking about getting a Firewire cable and card to see if that works. Is it possible that the USB is faulty but the Firewire may still work?
Western Digital My Book Premium Edition hard drive
Model: WD5000D032-000
Size: 500 Gig
Support website: link
Any help will be appreciated – thank you!