WD My Book Studio II keeps freezing on OSX Mavericks 10.9.4

I haven’t experienced any data loss (though after reading all the reports, I’m worried it might happen anytime) but the drive keeps “freezing” after 10-20 minutes of use. By freezing I mean it still appears on the desktop but its contents can’t be accessed. The whole system becomes “clogged” until I unplug the drive (from the mains or from the computer). If I plan it again, it’s back to normal… for a few minutes. After some use, it will freeze again.

I’ve tried many suggested solutions. None of these worked. The behaviour remained the same after each of these:

  • updating WD Drive Manager

  • uninstalling WD Drive Manager and all other WD software

  • updating the drive’s firmware

  • restoring (via Time Machine) from OS X 9.4 back to 9.3 (the errors started roughly around this time, can’t be sure exactly)

  • using Verify option in Disk Utility prompted no errors

I’ve also tried Hardware approaches, but they didn’t make a difference either:

  • plugging the drive on its own socket, instead of a power strip.

  • connecting the drive by USB instead of FireWire

I’m out of ideas! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Is it possible for you to connect the My Book Studio on another Mac? This would rule out any possible problems with the Mac where you currently have it connected. 

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Thanks for the suggestion.

I couldn’t get my hands on another Mac but I could access the drive on a Windows computer thanks to a trial version of MacDrive 9.

To my surprise, the drive works smoothly on this PC. So you were right, there’s some kind of incompatibility with either Macs in general or my Mac in particular, but it’s not a hardware problem (that’s good to know!).

I still don’t know how to go around it though. I’ve tried the drive with and without the WD Drive Manager to no avail.

I have the same problem. I used my book studio in iMac and PD(win7).

Hi nomadyp,

I have the feeling my problem might be related to the temperature: the drive stops itself to avoid overheating. Maybe that’s something you can try: suing it at night, or in a cooler room, or so.