I have used this My Book as my iTunes drive for a little over a year now with no problems - suddenly iMac does not see Drive.
I was using the firewire connection, but problem is still there with USB as well. Drive powers on, but all that happens is that white vertical light on the front of the Drive enclosure moves up and down, but the drive never shows up on the desktop.
I have tried power cycling and a bunch of different cables (both USB and FW)
Have you tried opening Disk Utility (in the Applications/Utilities folder) and checking it over with that?
Better still, start up your iMac with its installer disk. Instead of starting the Installer software, go to Utilities in the I
nstaller menu bar and open Disk Utility from there. Verify the Disk. If it says the WD HDD is ok, try repairing the disk anyway.
Quit Disk Utility and , if necessary, the installer software. Restart your mac and see if the My Book appear now.
If not, you might want to try Disk Warrior from Alsoft but make sure you get the very latest version if you are running under Snow Leopard. Disk Warrior may be obtained from here -
I have a very similar problem with my two years old MyBook Premium External Drive.
I looked for any firmware downloads as you suggested to our friend awmr1. I couldn’t find any such download, however I did find a page that suggested that Snow Leopard might not be compatible with my MyBook Premium (or should that be stated the other way around?).
I don’t really think this is the problem as it would have no doubt failed under Tiger and Leopard. I’m really clutching at straws here. I somehow can’t believe that my MyBook Premium can work fine then just stop, work fine again for several hours then fail again.
I will try updating the firmware when i get home in a couple hours (although I am unsure how to update firmware on a drive that will not mount - but hopefully i will figure it out)
I didn’t even know that these drives had updated firmware.
I will be sure to give this a try when I get home and post back - many, many thanks for the assistance.
So last night, I went home and attempted to reconnect my MY Book to my Imac - and luckily i was able to get it to mount.
i think this is just dumb luck - as i have been able to get it to mount before, but then it becomes unresponsive and disappears from my desktop.
So once it was mounted, I followed the onine instructions to update the firmware and install WD device manager on my Mac.
Once this whole process was completed, the drive seemed to actually be stable. I was able to play files from, and transfer files on and off.
Before I went to bed, I set it up to transfer about 400GB off of it, in order to salvage my files in case the drive died again.
Sure enough, when I awoke this morning, I had an error message pertaining to one of my files - saying that it could not be copied. This of course had stalled the transfer of all other files behind it. Once I bypassed the error message, the WD drive was again unresponsive.
It was still mounted to the desktop, but I could not access any files on it or anything.
The light on the front was lightly fading on and off.
I rebooted my iMac, only to find that the WD drive now would not mount at all . . . . the light on the front is now back to moving up and down as if it is trying to get it’s bearings (same thing it was doing before all of this)
Based on my similar experiences last month with a WD MyBook that I used for my TimeMachine backups (and the answer I received from WD telephone support), I believe the drive is failing or has failed. Either way, there is no software-driven repair possible.
I cannot say that your drive has mounted for the last time, though it sounds to me as if it has. If by chance it mounts so you can get more of your files off of it, good. But you need a new drive.
I highly recommend the Iomega Prestige desktop drive, especially because of its three year warranty.
I know that this is of no consolation to you but I have had the exact same experience as you - except that I had no firmware update option available for my MyBook Premium (as far as I know).
When mine began working again quite spontaneously I had already been kicking myself for not tranferring stuff off of it onto my internal HDD. So when I suddenly had another bite at the cherry I immediately took advantage of it and copied about 140 gigs to my iMac. Took around an hour and the transfer appears to have been successful - although I haven’t been able to check this yet. At the end of this session I ejected the volumes on my MyBook Premium. The device hasn’t even hinted at working since.
I have tried a new cable and running the drive on another Mac. No joy.
I have also tested the output of the PSU. It’s putting out about 10.9 volts DC. Whether this is significantly below the rated 12 volts enough so as to cause the MyBook to be power starved I don’t know - and probably won’t now be able to find out. So about an hour or so ago I admitted to myself that I think my drive has gone. KNorkins has just confirmed this for me.
Don’t you think It is odd that we both had the machines come back to life one final time affording an opportunity for us to recover data? I wonder if this is a built in feature?
If so, I wonder what else has been built-in? Obsolescence perhaps? It such a shame my MyBook died after only a couple of years. I was only using it for TimeMachine backups so no one can accuse me of giving it a thrashing.
I would be interested to know how this finally resolves for you. I’m off now to checkout the Iomega Prestige mentioned by our friend KNorkin
(Update: Checked out the Iomega. No use to me as it is USB 2 only and not Firewire. I’ll probably stick with WD therefore and get maybe get a larger capacity external HDD sinc they have come down in price quite a bit since I got my 500gb MyBook Premium and I was already considering getting one in any case)
Thanks for sharing your experience - sorry it’s been a while since i’ve been on here.
My situation ended with the drive working one last time (even after the firmware update) at which time i copied off as much as i could before the drive dismounted (real word?) from my iMac.
So I lost a bunch of stuff - no real biggie - I can re-rip my cd’s and dvd’s.
Not that I want another of these drives as I think they may be pretty shoddy.
Firewire is important to me as well - let me know if you find a good drive at a good deal. This is all so I can have ONE drive conected to my iMac to use as a network share for my WD TV Live (which has been rendered useless until WD releases firmware that fixes the audio sync issue)
Anyway - sorry to hear of your troubles - but check the warranty site - if you can get a replacement you can throw it on craigslist if nothing else. . . .
Thanks for sharing your experience - sorry it’s been a while since i’ve been on here.
My situation ended with the drive working one last time (even after the firmware update) at which time i copied off as much as i could before the drive dismounted (real word?) from my iMac.
So I lost a bunch of stuff - no real biggie - I can re-rip my cd’s and dvd’s.
Not that I want another of these drives as I think they may be pretty shoddy.
Firewire is important to me as well - let me know if you find a good drive at a good deal. This is all so I can have ONE drive conected to my iMac to use as a network share for my WD TV Live (which has been rendered useless until WD releases firmware that fixes the audio sync issue)
Anyway - sorry to hear of your troubles - but check the warranty site - if you can get a replacement you can throw it on craigslist if nothing else. . . .
Hi Amwr1
Thanks for your kind comments.
Re your shoddy drives comment. I was speaking with the guy who maintains the ‘servers’ where I work and I mentioned my experience. He reckons that what we have experienced is “pretty much par for the course.” He told me he has “hundreds of dead drives stacked up somewhere” and he thinks that WD drives are ‘no worse than any make’.
He recommended that I get a 2TB drive. But he said make sure that it is two 1TB drives inside (rather than one single 2TB like some models). He said I could then “RAID” the drives and if one failed I could swap the dead one out for a new drive (and carry on regardless - presumably). At least I think that is the gist of what he meant.
He also said that the drives he uses tell him hirn by email that they are about to fail. Cool or what! Which makes me think I was right think the device allowed me to copy my data off it before ‘giving up the ghost’. If this is true then it is really cool it does this and even more cool I was able to intuit the situation and take advantage of it. I’m sure this cannot be generally known.
I will speak with him again the next time I see him. Meanwhile someone else out there may be able to fill in the gaps maybe? Hint, hint!!
It occurs to me that if I get the 2TB Studio whatever, it may not be necessary for me to partiton the new backup drive into one Time Machine volume and another volume for applications and stuff overflowing from my internal HDD (as I did with my MyBook Premium) because the data is scattered all over the drive in any case.
The IT guy told me that, irrespective of partitioning (which is the “Logical Space” on the drive), the actual physical space used to store the data is scattered all over the whole of the drive’s platters. So my concern that the read/write heads only using half of the MyBook Premium drive’s platters leading to uneven wear when backing up with Time Machine to only one partition is unfounded.
The Hard Drive Might be corrupted even mine did. Do a data recovery and reformat the hard drive and its going to be good.
Thanks, but I can’t get my computer even to see the drive let alone manipulate any files or stuff on it. Disk Utiiity can’t see it and, just as significantly, neither can Alsoft’s Disk Warrior. The drive just sits there making a faint clicking noise. I would guess that it is to do with the mechanism that spins the platters or its power supply, rather than the electronics that control the data tranfer because the LED on the front glows normally even when the power cable has been disconnected (and the firewire cable left in situ). Or it could be something else entirely, of course.
Either way, I have followed diagnostic instructions posted here by WD and got as far as using the drive with my Dad’s iMac. Still dead, so I reckon WD’s advice that if it has failed to work on another computer after trying all the other tests, it must be defunct.
There’s really only a few reasons why a drive clicks like yours does:
bad data cable (replace with different)
not enough power (usually plugging into a wall outlet directly tells you if it’s not getting enough power)
bad drive
I know it ■■■■■, but if you’ve tried everything above, then you drive has failed and you need to replace it.
Yes I agree. I have just tried once more with it plug directly into the wall socket, but no joy. The round blue LED on the front lights up (well the outermost ring does) but now it remains silent. I haven’t been able to try it with another power supply but I don’t hold out much hope of the problem being there in any case.
No, I think it is time I cut my losses and buy a new one. Maybe the WDMy Book Studio Edition II 2TB. I wonder if I could use the power supply from this to test out the My Book Premium to see it is the PSU?
Mac’s won’t mount after (1st few days) the WD MyBook II World Edition 4TB NAS
Well - I did not receive any responses via the forum, I realize these take some time, so I called Western Digital Support Directly today and though they had to accellerate me to 3 different support levels over 60minutes - they were very helpful.
The Senior Technician in Calif. stated that the WD MyBook II has a problem with APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME wireless basestations (router).
Still seems weird that Everything worked flawlessly for 3 days - but then after that, NO Mac would mount the drive, the only way was to connect via smb:\ IP which is not what you want to see as you loose all of your ‘mac’ like look and feel and every file now looks like a unix file (like MS word doc without the .doc)
Unfortunately - the Sr. Tech stated that they have nor will be working on a solution for this - which is a Sad statement as the drive showed great potential at first, I had been surprised that it was so cross-platform compatible initially.
Luckily - I purchased it from BUYDIG and they have a wonderful return policy - so I’m sending it back! I think I’ll just bit the bullet and go with the more expensive QNAP product. Sometimes saving money and buying the ‘deal’ is just not the ticket.
Oh well - best wishes to everyone, but being a dual platform user (Mac and Win) I need a NAS solution that’s solid.
Thanks to Western Digital - you’re about 90% there but you really need to go the next step as if this had worked you would have had a Great Home Media Server Solution.
Yes, you are correct. The 4Tb version doesn’t work with Macs. NAS? What that mean? Anyway, WD on their website state this clearly. Hence I purchased the 2TB version. I got the impression though that it was Macs - full stop - rather than just the Airport base station that the 4TB version won’t work with.
Curiously, Apple Store offers the 4TB version for sale. It was lucky for me that I saw the WD site first. If you bought the 4Tb version through the AppleStore you may wish to take this up with them.
It would be really interesting to know why the 4TB version won’t work with Macs. It can’t be a hardware limitation if the RAM on Macs has for some time been able to go to 16TB and beyond. MacOS X? possibly. I doubt it though.
These devices are listed under the NETWORK storage TAB (not the Mac Products Tab) and the one I purchased clearly states that it even supports Apples TimeMachine backup software and is also Windows 7 compatible.
Sorry Charlie - but it seems Western Digital needs to correct this error - and then inform their own Tech support personnel, as Tech Support is stating that its a known problem, however the website states clearly that both Mac and Win 7 are supported.
