Need to Restart WD My Book Every Time I Back Up iMac...What Diagnostics or Fixes Do You Recommend?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
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Unless I 1) restart my WD MY Book by disconnecting it from power for 30 seconds and 2) manually initiate a back-up, my iMac will not back up through Time Machine.  

I did upgrade to Mac OS X  Lion 10.7.5 nine months ago, but this problem started spontaneously only three months ago – and I didn’t make any changes to my software or hardware at all three months ago.

Sometimes, but not all the time, I can’t see the My Book disc in Finder.  At least I can back up to My Book if I restart, but I am concerned that the disc will disconnect altogether at some point – and I will not be able to access my files if necessary.

What diagnostics do you recommend to assess the problem and what next steps should I take to try to fix it?  Thank you very much in advnce for your help!

Best regards,

Dan

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Sounds similar to a problem I have been noticing. My Book keeps ‘falling asleep’ and the only way to wake it up was to fiddle about with power and data cables until the thing re appears in Windows Explorer.

I was advised that it is possible to disable the sleep function (from the settings menu). This worked but it seems a bit strange.

I am no expert on any of this stuff but I reckon its something to do with the way the automated backup software works i.e. it probably works fine (hopefully) with the backup software chugging away in its own mysterious way but if (like me) you also want to have ‘manual access’ to the drive e.g. to access files as with a conventional external hard drive the 'computer says ‘no’.

Dunno if this helps but good luck

Terry

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[THIS IS A REPLY TO TERRY, NOT A NEW POST…THOUGH ANY OTHER ADVICE ON MY ORIGINAL POST IS VERY WELCOME!]

Hi Terry,

Thank you very much for trying to help me out!  It sounds like stopping My Book from sleeping is worth a shot.  Where do I go to change the settings on what I assume is My Book, not Apple’s Time Machine ? 

[OOPS…I JUST NOTICED YOU’RE PROBABLY A WINDOWS PERSON…YOU MAY NOT KNOW APPLE TERMS SO PLEASE DISREGARD THE REST IF SO…I DID THINK THIS WAS A MAC FORUM, THOUGH, SO MAYBE YOU DO KNOW THE TERMS LIKE “TIME MACHINE” AND “FINDER”]  

Time Machine backs up every hour.  After I last re-started My Book, I think it backed up successfully several times…then it just stopped backing it up. 

Another big problem I’m now having is that Time Machine continues “preparing to back up” to My Book for an extended period since it can’t successfully do it.  While the Time Machine icon is spinning and  back-up preparation is going on, other things on my computer start freezing or going haywire. 

It’s one thing if my browser slows to a snail’s pace, but both Word and my Finder just stopped responding during the most recent attempted back-up.  Word came back when I stopped the back-up attempt process, but I can’t save any of my work in Word since Finder never came back.  Finder shows nothing…no Documents, no Applications, no My Book (obviously).  I’ll have to re-boot and lose all my work.  Sure hope my Finder comes back.

I don’t want to buy another external drive if I don’t have to, but, if this keeps happening, I would.  I do need to make sure the problem is with My Book, not Time Machine or something else on my iMac.  I suppose it could even be USB wire, but that’s unlikely since it does work when I re-start My Book.

Anyway…Thanks again, Terry!  If your My Book settings are in a Windows environment, I’m not sure if your guidance on stopping My Book from sleeping would translate to my iMac, but it might.

All my best,

Dan