So, this is a brand new drive - it literally only came out of the box about five hours ago, so I can personally guarantee that it hasn’t gotten any particular trauma in that time.
When I first plugged it in, it ran the SmartWare set-up just fine - I adjusted all the settings, set up security, downloaded the new updates, etc.
After installing the firmware update, I power-cycled the drive, rebooted, and installed the SmartWare update, then rebooted again, all per instructions. After that… nothing. The computer no longer recognizes the hard drive (it did initially), but the SmartWare is still there in My Computer. It autoruns whenever the drive is plugged in, but does nothing visible once I authorize it to run.
I followed all the troubleshooting advice posted here (checking power, usb cable & port, etc), with no result.
Could there be an alternate reason for this besides, you know, inexplicable total drive failure? There’s no data on the drive, so I’m not worried about that, but it would kind of **bleep** if I had to send this one back since it’s the warranty replacement for the last drive that failed.
Drive: MyBook Essential WDBAAF0020HBK
Computer: Windows 7 32bit HP ProBook 4520s.
