I bought my first WD external drive, a 14TB Elements and I am not happy with the way it works. With all of my previous external drives, I would leave them plugged in all the time. When I want to use them I turn the power on. When I’m through, I use the “Safely Remove Hardware” utility and turn the power off. If I want to use it again, I simply turn it back on. If the Element is plugged in (and the power light is off), when I turn the computer on, the Element turns itself on and Windows loads it, even though I don’t want to use it. If I do use it, when I am through with it and use “Safely Remove Hardware” utility, the power light blinks but will not shut off. If I want to use it again later I have to unplug and plug back in the power or USB cable so Windows will reload the drive.
I was disappointed that there was no operating information on the sheet that came with the drive, just a picture showing the cables plugged in.
Also, what does the power switch do? I have tried everything I can think of and it does nothing.
I bought the WD external drive, 14TB Elements and I have the same problem.
I would like to know what the power switch does.
I can turn my 14TB Elements on. But can not turn it of with the power switch.
By using “Safely Remove Hardware” it does turn of but then I can not turn it back on with the power switch.
Also when it goes on standby, my pc does not find it anymore.
I have to take out usb en put back in to turn it back on.
This has left me very disappointed with WD. I’m doing the same thing you are doing, using the USB cable as a switch. I still have no idea what the power switch does.
I received a reply from someone on the WD staff, that suggested I contact WD support. That didn’t go very well, so I replied to the staffer and told them how I felt about WD support, now I see their reply and my response is now gone.
Below is the message I sent to the WD staffer.
Thanks for the suggestion, but right now I am questioning if I want to keep this drive and if I want to do business with Western Digital in the future. I have favored WD drives since I got into computers over 30 years ago. Sitting at my desk I’m looking at 3 Mediasonic boxes, 1 RAID and 2 Proboxes, each with 4 drives and another 4 drives in my computers. A company is only as good as what you have done for me lately. I tried to contact customer service yesterday (Sunday) and spent what seemed like forever listening to the same messages over and over only to be cut off before I was connected to anyone. This morning I thought if I called as close to 8 AM as I could I would be able to talk with some one. So I got to listen to the same messages again for over half an hour, only to be connected to someone on a VERY bad connection (very low volume) that could barely speak English. So right now I thinking about sending the Elements drive back and getting another drive from someone else.
