My MYBOOK ESSENTIAL (WDBAAF0020HBK) is not recognized by my PC (WIN8) as a hard drive. I have downloaded the updated drivers, plugged it directly into a wall outlet, changed the USB cable all to no avail. WIN 8 Explorer does not see the drive. Device manager indicates it is present and working. WD MB 1110 Device Properties; Volumes Tab indicates: Type-unknown; Status-not inialized; Partition style-NA; Capacity-1907059mb; Unallocated space-0; Reserved space-0; no volumes listed. The drive was and is formated NTFS. Help please, any thoughts will be apriciated… Nick
Success!
Fortunately I have 2 MB Essentials, one is a 2 terabyte, the other a 1 terabyte (WDBAAF0020HBK and WDBAAF0010HBK, respectively). I was only trying to use the larger one (2T). I decided to give the 1T drive a try to see if it might work. It did.
With the 1T connected to the laptop I reset the system. WIN 8 asked me what it should do with the external device. I opened it in folder view. Then I started WD SMARTWARE. after going through the program installation the drive folder showed all the files. I connected the other drive (2T) and reset the system again. Upon opening the SMARTWARE application both drives we there, but not the files yet. Under the HOME tab there was an option to install the second drive (2T). After doing this the drive and all files were available in the windows explorer.
I believe the fix with only one drive would be to download and install the model specific WD SMARTWARE software.
Thanks for the use of the forum, Nick…
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Welcome to the Community and thank you very much for sharing the outcome. Hopefully it’ll help someone else in need.
