My Book Essential Drive - 2TB - Can't get it to work AT ALL!

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

I have several WD drives.  I have been a happy client of WD for many years.  I run a MacBook Pro (MAC OS X - Version 10.5.8) 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor - 2 GM 667 MHz Memory.  I am currently deployed to Iraq and depend on all of my WD drives for all of my external storage use.  I have a My Book Essential 1TB that currently contains all of my movies, music and television digital media.  I purchased the My Book Essential 2TB drive so that I could move my movies to the larger storage drive and have my television and music media on the 1TB.  I also have a 500 GB Passport which currently holds all of my photos.  

I followed the installation directions and downloaded the firmware and VC Manager download and still can not get the drive to work.  Everytime I try to move a file or folder to the new drive it tells me that my drive is not modifiable.

 “The item could not be moved because “MY BOOK” cannot be modified.”

Can someone with more computer savvy help me to get this drive to operate correctly so that I can stop being so frustrated with the whole situation.  I would appreciate all help that you can give me.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hello,

This is because the " My book essentia" is a NTFS (windows) Drive and you are using a mac, in orde to use this drive you will have to format it to HFS (mac os extended journaled ) in a GUID partition,

Please follow the guide below on how to do this,

Format Guide (choose your OS first)

Also if you do not like that (annoying) software, you are able to disable it, if you do not want the software use the guide below on how to disable the virtual cd with smart ware

Disable VCD Smartware Link

Please try this, it should work :slight_smile:

Greets

Random WD Fan

1 Like
3

Thank you! - Thank you! - Thank you!!!

I followed your onscreen directions and viola, everything is working as it should be.  I no longer want to throw the darn thing out the window…  :wink:

I appreciate all the time that you took to find the answer and post it for me.  :smiley:

Thanks again.

shellymd

4

No problem,

:smileyvery-happy:

5

Will this work on both Windows and Mac?  I just bought a 2TB hard drive and i have the same problem.

6

Hey,

Yes it will =D

(now a days then) they gave you the possability to update the firmware

thanks

someone

7

Hi

I just bought this drive and since I run a Imac I did reformat to the Mac standard format right from the get go.  I then saw a message telling me that there was an update to the firmware available. I said Great!!! and downloaded the firmware and followed the instruction to the letter( disconnecting and rebooting the computer and reconnecting the drive. My Imac did not even the presence of the drive. It did not mount it . Thank god I bought an exchange policy from the store. It goes back tomorrow unless someone has a real suggestion as to how I can get to work oroperly.

Thanks

It seems that there is a lot of people with the same situation with the firmwares on all kinds of WD drives. It looks like they are sabotaging themselves…

8

I’m having difficulty getting two WD 2TB MyBook Essential drives to work together on the same computer (Windows 7 loaded).  when I unplug either, the other works.  When they are both plugged in, only the first one plugged in works.  Disk manager says “This disk is offline because there is a signature collision with another disk that is online”.  Any help would be appreciated…

9

I have the same issue trying to connect 2 2TB drives. They won’t work together. Any help would be appreciated.

10

It seems this issue always arises with windows 7.

11

Hi,

I have a WD My Book Essential 1.5TB. From the box I opened and formatted in Disk Utility as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I was able to access the drive setting up for Time Machine. After I set up my Time Machine for backup, clicked backup and had to wait long hours to back up 250G! When I went back, it says back up has failed. I restarted my iMac and plugged the HD back again.  It now has this “clicking” noise. Disk Utility can see it but when I try to format, it stops at about 50% and after waiting for a couple of hours, it says “format failed” with this “clicking” noise continuing.

Please help! I have no data in this drive to save. I just need it working. Thanks!

12

Ripley wrote:
I have the same issue trying to connect 2 2TB drives. They won’t work together. Any help would be appreciated.

Are you giving each one time to get assigned a drive letter?  If not, do so.  You should be able to also go into Disk Management and manually assign the other a drive letter.

13

Clicking only happens with one of two scenarios: 1) the drive is bad; or 2) it’s not getting enough power.  If you are plugged into a power strip, try plugging directly into the wall and see if the clicking stops.

14

I am not an EXPERT at all computer problems or I would not be here right now. However I do known enough to be able to repair computers for income.  One very bad sign of a faulty hard drive is the infamous clicking noise- normally about one click a second. Some times too low of power can cause this, or sometimes computer companies use too small a hard drive and they latter discover they have a ton of returns all because the power supply was not powering up the drive with enough voltage/amps.

In almost every case I have had, I had to replace every hard drive I had that had a loud clicking noise- it’s a well known issue with failing hard drives.