Hello, Although my WD harddrive (elements) is recognised by my computer when on - (after booting) - the computer hangs in BIOS if the harddrive is connected before booting up. OS is XP Home. Wondering if anyone else has had a similar problem and if so what was done to correct this. Have googled and tried something someone suggested, which was to look at the sequence at start up… (in BIOS) and also to enable Legacy support… the sequence appeared to be right… … and as far as the Legacy Support… there was none… merely reference to a disk.
So I didn’t change anything. Would be most grateful for any ideas. Thanks in advance. Lizzytish
Look in the device manager and see if there is any problems shown there. I think a yellow spot on the device. Besides the drives check USB. Is this a new problem or has it been like this since first use? Did you try different USB port? They can be a bit cranky and be hard to detect.
Thank you so much, Joe, for replying. I’ve checked the Device Manager and the WD external drive is reported as ‘healthy’
Once the computer is up and running and I connect the external drive… everything is fine… it is recognised by windows… its only when the drive is connected and the computer is booting up that it seems to have a problem… and hangs. And as soon as I disconnect the drive and reboot… it fires up without a problem… so it has to be something to do with the configuration somewhere!
I had checked and changed usb ports originally when I found this to happen…
I only bought the drive just over a week ago… and it has been happening from the start.
Another irritation is that I have ‘sharing’ with other computers, as I use the drive from a laptop… and I find that because of this ‘not being able to find/recognise the drive’ when booting up… I lose my setting for ‘sharing’ and have to do it all over again… grrrrrrrrrh!
One thing I haven’t tried is to connect it to the laptop… will try… and let you know the result.
Thank you once again for helping… It is much appreciated… and any further thoughts would be gratefully received.
Further to this saga… I tried booting up my laptop… IBM thinkpad…(bought before Lenovo took over) with the wd elements ext.drive connected… and guess what it worked like a charm! So its got to be something to do with the BIOS set up on my pc… so strange and so puzzling!! something I noticed, that I hadn’t before, is that when my laptop boots up… you don’t get to see the BIOS menu flash by… guess IBM’s set up is different. anyway for what its worth… thought I would pass this info on… Thanks again for any ideas/help… Most grateful.
Many thanks for your suggestion, and apologies for not getting back sooner… been a tad busy on the home front…
Think perhaps your suggestion has some bearing… ’ cos on the screen when the BIOS hangs, and I have copied it word for word it speaks about : USB Device (s) 1 mouse; l Hub; 1 Storage device
and goes on…auto detecting the Primary Master, Secondary Master etc…
Then it screeches to a halt;
Auto detecting USB Mass Storage Device #1
and hangs
I have noticed that when the wd drive is not connected… that under USB Device(s) it only refers to the mouse and the hub. so this probably means that it is referring to the WD drive when listing storage device (as above) can’t be any other - don’t have any others!
I have been into setup… but cannot see anything obvious to my eye… to change…and I have a healthy respect most of the time for my computer! Is this a hard thing to correct? would you know a link or tut which I could perhaps use to help me.
I have followed up on quite a few solutions that other people found… but none helped me. Almost resigning myself to live with this… its a nuisance factor… but at least everything else works… and I keep reminding myself this is not an ideal world!!
Thank you again, Bill, your thoughts are most appreciated… and hopefully you may have a few more…
Regards,
Lizzytish
ps… on re-reading your post… I am presuming that I have understood your comments, as per my reply. LT
I recently purchased two separate, 1TB Passport Essential SE drives to use on my Mac. When using Final Cut Pro the drive does not spin up fast enough to capture video. I have 8 other Passport drives and none of them have this problem. I think this new crop of WD drives is inferior to to their previous ones. Western Digital no longer even knows what it is sticking inside the enclosures or guarantees access time or rotational speed. Final Cut Pro would even hang sometimes when this drive was connected upon launch of the program. When I contacted WD about the problem they replied with the following lame response: "WD does not use the same drive inside each external drive. As a result, there is no way to know the RPM or model of the drive. Please see the link below for more information.
Answer Title: What kind of hard drive is inside a Western Digital external hard drive?
Lizzytish, like Bill stated, this sounds like the computer is trying to boot from the external hard drive. Inside of the BIOS you need to check on the boot up sequence and make sure that the boot up sequence has your SATA port as primary boot. Basically your computer is trying to find the Operating System in the external drive before finding it in your internal drive.
Wesleyg, how does that help Lizzytish with her issue? hehe.
Thank you, Lomalith, for your thoughts… well it could be what you are suggesting… but logically it doesn’t appear to be this…
1… the external harddrive is not ‘activated’ -
2… the primary master and the secondary master have also been found prior to the search for the "USB
storage device"
So it shouldn’t be looking at the storage device to boot up… anyway surely it would be only after it had found the device that it might expect to boot up from there ? and in this case, it is still searching for it.
Unfortunately its one of those ‘mysteries’ No doubt in the fullness of time, something will dawn on me.
But I do thank you for your interest and help. Any further thoughts would gratefully accepted as before.
I just encountered the same problem and found this thread. I’m using a new Studio drive on my PC with Windows. Indeed, it’s my third Studio drive, but my first with the Virtual CD feature. The problems seems to be an incompatibility between my BIOS and the firmware on the new drive when booting with the drive connected via USB. As soon as the drive is disconnected, the BIOS unhangs and proceeds to start the boot process. My first hunch was that the BIOS was trying to boot from the Virtual CD and I attempted to get into my BIOS settings to change the boot priority. I had to disconnect the drive to unfreeze the BIOS and get into its settings. Both the new HDD and the Virtual CD were listed (despite the drive having been disconnected) and the VCD had been given priority over the internal HDD. I changed this and rebooted, but the problem remained. Incidentally, I have a another old WD passport drive connected via USB and this is never listed in the BIOS and never causes a problem. I currently have the drive connected via a Firewire 400 chain to the PC and the computer is now able to boot with the drive connected. What I’d like to do is totally remove the VCD feature (not just hide it), get rid of this incompatibility issue and reclaim the disc space. It appears that WD have tried to be too smart for their own good.
Incidentally, I have a another old WD passport drive connected via USB and this is never listed in the BIOS and never causes a problem. I currently have the drive connected via a Firewire 400 chain to the PC and the computer is now able to boot with the drive connected. What I’d like to do is totally remove the VCD feature (not just hide it), get rid of this incompatibility issue and reclaim the disc space. It appears that WD have tried to be too smart for their own good.