My Book Studio Edition for Mac is constantly running

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

I have a My Book Studio Edition for Mac that is constantly running.  It doesn’t back up, and it gets very warm.

I unplug all the cables for a couple minutes, and replug them, and click the “Backup Now” command.  It does the backup, but the next scheduled Backup… it will run constantly for hours without doing the backup… the same as it did before?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Jim 

2

My WD MyBook Studio does get warm for long period of time too.

It does go to sleep if no activity after 15 minutes.

Which backup software you are using? Smartware or Time Machine.

Did your computer Energy Saver setting set to be on all the time?

Put a check mark on the “Put the hard disk (s) to sleep when possible”

So the computer can turn off the hard disk drive when no activity.

3

I am using the Time Machine software… and the Energy Saver is set to put the computer to sleep after 12 minutes.  

Even though the computer is asleep, the External Hard Drive keeps running without doing any backup and gets very warm.

I called WD this morning, and they said that I can return it, and they would send a replacement refurbished one back to me.  I have read in other forums where people have received refurbished items from the manufacturer, and they were in very bad shape.  So I don’t know if I will send it back, or get a new External Hard Drive.

Do you know anything about WD’s replacement program?

Thanks,

Jim

4

No, I do not know anything about their drive replacement program.

Here are couple of things that you can try before sending the drive in for replacement:

  1. Back up all important data from WD external drive to your internal drive.

  2. Format the WD external drive with Apple file system.

  3. Power cycle the WD external drive, unplug and re-plug the Firewire cable also.

  4. Restart your computer.

  5. Re-configure the Time Machine to choose the WD external drive as destination disk.

    Then let the Time machine does its job.

If after try that still not solve the problem you are having, then go ahead send the drive back to get it replace.

5

Thanks, I will give that a try.

Jim

6

I concur -

one of the odd things I saw with Time Machine is that if it got interrupted during a backup, then the next time it does a backup it verifies what was backed up previously - this can take a very long time - and there is no indication of what is going on (except for a spinning Time Machine icon for hours …)

I found the best thing to do was essentially wipe the drive as mentioned above, however one more step:

In Time machine preferences, it might get confused by a drive that has been reformatted (mine did)

The solution, was to “Select Disk” and set to None. Click OK, come out,

go back in and set the drive to your Western Digital drive.

This seemed to reset things properly - the first backup took a fairly long time, but after that it only takes a few minutes (assuming not much has changed.)

Hope this helps.

7

Since the time of my question I have purchased a G-Drive, and have had no further problems.  It backs up flawlessly.

Thanks everyone…

Jim

8

I had a G-Drive for my old Mac and it worked like a champ.  I was trying to save money by this WD My Book 1TB but now I am thinking I should have spent the extra money for a G-Drive.  The transfer rates for this WD are way too slow.

9

Hi everyone, see this thread, as I think that’s where everyone with this issue is ending up:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Externals/WD-Elements-with-permanent-access-noise-in-idle/m-p/76164#M1098