I recently bought a WD Passport Essential 640 GB. I have an iMac running Mac Os X 10.6.4. Since the first day I bought it, the drive never mounted on my iMac. The WD Smartware CD would always mount, but never the drive. I successfully removed the WD Smartware yesterday and whenever I plug the drive the cd doesn’t mount anymore. The Problems are: the mac disk utility doesn’t recognize the external drive, only the virtual CD as “804.4 MB WD Virtual CD” as childs Disk utility shows me disk1s0 and WD Smartware, nothing else. I downloaded the product update again and it tells me the drive is locked. Which makes sence since I had a Password before removing the WD Smartware. But now, since the drive doesn’t mount and since the drive is locked with no place for me to type the password, I have no clue what to do! Why is the drive not mounting? is it a drive problem an iMac UBS PORTS problem? Will the drive only be mounted after the password is inserted? This is a nightmare… it has been 5 days since I bought it and still not being able to use it…
If you locked the drive, the SmartWare CD should mount onto your desktop to allow you to unlock the drive. If that isn’t happening, have you tried using your drive on another computer? Have you changed the USB port? Have you tried using another USB cable? Do not connect the drive through a USB hub, PCI card, or extension cable.
Also (sorry), I don’t have a seperate cable like the one that came with the Drive,it’s the usual on one end and a smaller camera size on the other. Nothing I have works.I have tried different usb ports on the computers.Support just told me to download the firmware on a windows,and at one point in the process,it will tell me to disconnect and turn off the My Book HD to cycle for 1 minute…?? At that point, I will be able to reconnect the HD to my Mac (or Windows) and it will be detectable. Going to try that now. I’ll get back to you with the results. I find it hard to believe,but he’s from WD!
It worked! I downloaded the windows updated firmware and utilities onto a flash drive from my Mac and when the My Book for Mac was connected to a Windows XP (offline) it was suddenly recognized. When the pop-up that tells you to turn off,and recycle both the computer and the HD, I disconnected and went hooked it back up to my Macbook and the HD was suddenly recognized. It helped knowing from past experience to immediately backup the WD Smartware to a file on my mac and to a DVD. Before calling support,I erased and reformatted the drive, wiping out the security password that caused the issue in the first place.Maybe a stroke of luck.
!!! Thanks for all the answers… But nothing seems to work… I plugged the WD my Passport into a pc laptop. I downloaded the Firmware update for Windows, installed it, disconnected the WD when asked to and connected it again to the pc laptop. The WD Smartware virtual CD appeared but the hard drive is still not mounting… If I plug-it in on my mac both the WD Smartware and HD don’t mount…
To be honest I am starting to regret the fact that I spent 100 Euro on something that is causing problems since the very first day.
Does anyone else have a clue to solve the problem?
Just for the sake of benefit to community I add comments and a few rants even though this thread is old…
To update fireware you need to use USB cable and not Firewire. So you should be able to use other cable as well without any problems. You don’t need to use a specific cable.
The VCD icon is a mounted virtual CD drive, which is like a fixed partition on your drive and comes per-installed and has a tool to manage the drive. I had to install the tool manually by dragging to app folder. If I just install the tool directly from the VCD, it won’t be installed property.
The menu bar enables to eject or mount the drive and the VCD. It will save the settings next time the drive is connected. So if it doesn’t connect for you, you have possibly deselected that option in the menu.
If you don’t set any password for the drive, the drive should stay mounted even when mac (macbook pro in my case) goes to sleep and works fine when it wakes up. Same when drive is physically re-connected.
What is not so convenient is the case when there is a password set for the drive. The drive will not mount back after it’s reconnected. It also wont mount back after sleep. Western Digital is suggesting the WD tool & drive MAY automatically ask for password. This is how WD puts it in their user guide:
… [“The procedure for unlocking your drive with the WD SmartWare software can be automatic or manual, depending on whether the Please provide your password prompt appears or not.”]…
The problem with this is that it never actually works. It;s always a manual process in my case. The icon is sitting in the taskbar but it doesn’t automatically detect when a LOCKED drive is connected back. So it’s basically waiting for manual input which is starting the “WD Smartware” tool after which the password appears and the drive then mounts.
I would expect the WD Tool in the toolbar would recognize when the password protected drive is re-attached and bring the password dialog box.
I have to start WD tool manually every time drive is attached or machine wakes up. That’s not how I can justify spending $200 for the drive which is sold as a " WD solution for Time machine for Mac".
I could have gone with any standard hard drive for half the price without the password which is an inconvenient process anyway.
