Firmware Update 3.1.0.11C for My Book Essential USB 3.0

Received a message to update firmware to 3.1.0.11C and SmartWare from 1.6.0 to 1.6.2. SmartWare lists the current drive firmware “revision” as 1.012; no “version” is mentioned anywhere. Drive is attached by USB2 to a Vista64 SP2 desktop.

Downloaded the updater software but when I run it as Administrator, it immediately fails with the Windows error:

“The application has encountered an unexpected error and is now exiting.”

The current SmartWare version 1.6.0 sometimes starts properly and sometimes doesn’t with Windows, but it will have to do until WD can hash out their appallingly poor software. I spent an hour with WD tech support to get 1.6.0 workable. At least I still have access to the drive and it will do background backups (at least sometimes). However, it is a resource hog when backups are taking place.

Try updating the firmware on another computer, but if the hard drive is working fine you can skip the firmware update.