My Book Essential 2TB USB3

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

March 02 2011

WD My Book Essential, 2 TB, USB3+USB2.
Installation was not straight forward.

  1. Update the Drive Firmware, Unzip the file and install.
  2. Turn of the drive, disconnect both USB and Power, wait 10 sec. and reconnect.
  3. Download and launch WD Software Updater.
  4. Download MS NET 3.5 Framework SP1 updater.
  5. Go back to step 3.
  6. Start and configure WD Software Updater.

Bit complicated? Not yet.

Had to run WD Firmware updater 3 times, as it was still at v1.012 and not at v1.014. Each time disconnect both USB and Power, wait 10 sec. and reconnect.

Same way with the WD software update, untill it said No update required.

Went to Complete Backup of drive C, which was 190 GB
Than from W7 complete backup with the disk image. After 3 hours it was still at 13%. Let it run and set the logoff after backup is complete.
Next day computer wouldn’t’t start up right away. It took few hours to start.
Found out, drive have to be physically disconnected for normal start.

Have to say, my computer has only USB2.
Don’t know if these updates were required for USB3 and causes problems with USB2.

2

Hi there, the software update is only for Smartware and since you are using Windows Backup then it was not needed to begin with, however, if the drive is not accepting a firmware update then I would take it back if I were you…

On the other hand, you have Windows 7, so .Net Framework 3.5 was not needed as well since it is part of Windows 7 already, and it’s only for Smartware installation since the drive itself only needs the SES drivers and nothing else to work…

Still, I’d format it to clean and try another W7 backup, if not I’d take it back since a firmware issue is delicate…