I have 2 My Book Essential 3TB, USB 3 drives. connected to a USB 3 board. When I start restoring files FROM the MyBook to my PC, the MyBook looses connection, the copy proces is interrupted and I have to restart the drive. After power cycling the drive, it works again for a few minutes, then the same thing happens. It seems like the drive is not capable of handling the USB 3 speed. I use robocopy and when I insert a 5 or 10 milliseconds wait between packets, then I don’t have that problem. Also, connected to a USB 2 port, the drive works well (but MUCH slower of course). I bought the drive, hoping for a decent, stable, fast solution, but it turns out to be unuseable. Hopefully, WD has a solution? If not, they both go to the junk yard.
Have you tried connecting the my book to another power socket, especially if you have it connected to a powerstrip with multiple ports a wall socket might be better.
Of course I am using a wall outlet, I have a computer network with 2 servers and 6 PC’s. I am a computer professional.
I have done the SMART, fast and thorough tests from Smartware, there were no problems
I have two MyBooks, one works OK on USB 3.
This one works fine on a USB 2 port but absolutely not on a USB 3 port.
It happens when I copy large files (movies) from the MyBook to another PC on the network.
I have written a testprogram that creates 1000 26 MB files, then copies them to another PC.
Creaing the files works ok.
After copying some 40 files connection is lost, I can recreate the problem every time.
I have a lot of corrupted files on the disk because of the disconnects.
I am now using the USB 2 port, waiting for a replacement by WD.
I just hoped someone else had the same problem and had a suggestion. As far as I can see when googling, the problem is not unknown with this kind of disk. But the cases I found happened after a longer period, my disk is only two weeks old.
WD accepted RMA, disk will be replaced. Good service, excellent.
Well this appears to be a commom problem.
I am right in the middle of attemping for the 4th time to transfer my folders from the 3tb My book to my pc however the drive keeps diconnecting.
If I unplug the usb cable and restart it doesn’t reconise the drive.
If I unplug the power it reboots the drive and I have to start all over again.
Taking about 35mins to transfer 10gb of Media Files however it will stop at about 14mins.
I have about 1.31tb of files to transfer so I can return this drive to the store.
I spoke to WD support and the consultant couldn’t help and told me to return the drive…it is obviously faulty. 
I am having a similar problem. I was running a backup every night but after 4 or so days I would notice that the backup had not run. The WD drive no longer was listed in Windows Explorer. I had to disconnect the USB 3 cable and the power cable and then reconnect them. After that the drive was again recognized for a few days. I never studied the backup carefully but suspect it happened when a full abckup was atttempted as I never got a full backup.
