Not recognizing WD 2TB MyBook

I have been using Western Digital 2TB MyBook Essential external drives for archiving for quite some time now. Before now it was as simple as purchasing a new drive, reformatting it as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and plugging it in. Yesterday I purchased another 2TB drive, formatted it on my Macbook Pro (which is running OS 10.6.8) transferred some files onto it, unmounted it - ejected it from desktop then plugged it into a USB port on my Power Mac (also running OS 10.6.8). The Power Mac will not recognize the drive. It doesn’t show up in Disk Utility, it doesn’t show up in System Profiler. I have another WD 2TB drive plugged into the Mac Pro and it recognizes it fine. One thing I do notice about the new drive, is that it’s icon shows up differently than my other external USB drives when I see it on my Macbook Pro desktop. See below for the difference in icons. I don’t know if this is an indication of anything. I’m baffled. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

below is the icon of the new MyBook Essential 2TB drive as it appears on the desktop of my Macbook Pro:

below is the icon of the other MyBook Essential 2TB hard drives as they appear on the desktop of my Mac Pro

The images have not been approved yet, but you might want to contact tech support for help.

The issue has been resolved. Thanks.

have a similar problem…what was the solution in your case?

Hi Palef,

Glad to help out with this. In the future I’ll remember to post the solution. :slight_smile:

It’s a bit convoluted but this worked for me. Let me know if it works for you as well.

The MyBook Essential doesn’t have additional software that you need to install. However, WD makes a free downloadable app called SmartWare which enables you to configure your drive with a password security measure. My fix was that I gave the drive a password with SmartWare, saved the configuration setting, then immediately deleted that security config which brought the drive back to it’s default ‘no password’ setting.

This operation was done with the new drive plugged into my Macbook Pro. I then ejected the drive off my MBP desktop, unplugged the USB from the laptop port and plugged it into my (already booted) Mac Pro. The Mac Pro now recognizes the new WD 2TB MyBook Essential hard drive and it’s icon is the conventional USB hard drive icon just like my other external USB drives. Holy cow, that was quite odd. But everything is smoothed out.