Most of the times I need to plug and unplug the drive in order to get it recognised, in some cases it does not work even thought i get the windows sound that the drive has been connected.
Once connected, as soon as something even barely touches the cable, the drive gets disconected.
In many ocassions I had to try several times across all the USB ports in order to get it working. I’m guessing it is the cable,
Usually I use USB 3.0 ports which work flawlesly with any other device.
I had the same issue with the MyBook 3TB Essential I bought in 2011. It would not stay connected regardless of firmware updates or swapping to different USB3.0 ports. Filing a Support request brought the answer to try a different cable. As you know the cable is not a standard USB3.0 item and I could not source it locally. WDC sent me a new cable (original cost of $14.99) for free because it was a brand new drive.