Have used my WD My Book 1Tb external drive successful for 18mths to backup PC (Widows 7). Now it won’t let me access it to view folders/data, nor do the unit’s lights show any data content being stored. I’m frequently getting a pop-up Windows message asking if I want to Format drive G:… as there’s no patition. When I restart it, it lights up and I can feel the disk spinning, but the lights just keep flashing. Very frustrating, please help! It has all our family photos stored on it!
I have the EXACT same problem for my 1TB for Mac. If someone has the answer…I have so much on that drive that I need back!! It’s aggrivating! It just flashes at me! It does not pop up in the Finder anymore. I fear the drive has been damaged but I don’t know how.
Although I have no answer for you, I just encountered a similar problem. The HD light is on, the driver is engaged, but the icon does not show up in SmartWare window (I opened this using another 500GB HD). I run Windows 7 Home Premium and my Explorer wheel just spins but cannot connect/find the 1TB HD.
I will let you know if I can figure out/obtain an answer as to what is wrong. It may be the same problem as yours.
My saviour… EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard (US$70 on-line download) - file is only bootable, so burn to a CD-ROM and re-boot computer (press F12, to boot from CD-ROM). Took 28hrs to scan whole 930Gb of files on my external 1Tb WD My Book drive - Selected ‘Patition Recover’ and under ‘Options’ menu I had to unchecked all options on first 3 pages, only leaving Recover RAW Data checked. Worked a treat and recovered all our jpg, mov, avi and other files, it even kept the files names and directory tree. Also, I ‘Exported’ the scan info file to my C:Drive, just in case I needed to go back and grab another file, so it didn’t need to re-run the whole lengthy scan.
Will now format my 1Tb and send back to WD for a replacement, however next time I won’t blindly trust WD products and back-up on another drive and computer as well!