My Book Essential Problems

I have a few problems with the My Book Essential that I just bought.  It is a 2TB external hard drive. 

The first problem I had was that I couldn’t safely remove it from my computer for some reason.  And then the WD SmartWare would not shut down at all.  Is there something I am not doing right?

Another problem I am having is with my Playstation 3.  I was told at Best Buy that this hard drive would work on it.  for some reason my ps3 isn’t reading the hard drive.  Does the My Book Essential work with ps3?

One last thing is, is there any way to save specific files onto the My Book Essential and not just all music or all movies?

Any help would be greatful because this is really frustrating

The first problem I had was that I couldn’t safely remove it from my computer for some reason. 

If drive is open via explorer, you can’t safe remove it.  Not sure if this was your issue.

And then the WD SmartWare would not shut down at all.  Is there something I am not doing right?

WD SmartWare is designed to run always on as continuous backup in mind.

Another problem I am having is with my Playstation 3.  I was told at Best Buy that this hard drive would work on it.  for some reason my ps3 isn’t reading the hard drive.  Does the My Book Essential work with ps3?

Have you re-formatted to FAT32?  It should be NTFS by default.

Good luck.

well i just picked up a 2 tb my essential drive to use with my ps3 as well, no luck. I reformatted drive to fat32 and disabled that smartware ■■■■! Still no luck! any suggestions? I am really gettin fed up with wd as alot of people and i think they will be losing ALOT of customers if they keep this up.   I went with WD because i own a 750 gig my book that worked fine with out all the stupid bells and whistles. If anybody has gotten a wd hdd with smartware to read on a ps3 please fill me in!

the only way i can use my 2tb with smartware on my ps3 is to direct stream with a media server. i use twonkymedia server and it streams from my pc to ps3. all my movies music and everything is accesible. they have it for half off so its only 15 bucks. Before encountering this problem with connecting my drive to my ps3 i had no clue what the media servers exactly where but if you run across the same problem as me u might wanna resort to this!

yes my drive has been formatted to fat32 and the smartware disabled and my ps3 wont read it when i plug the usb in!

so unless wd can completely remove smartware which they say they cant because it is built in to the firmware i guess streaming is the only way for now if you bought your hd for your ps3

I have same problem you have: not safely removing Book Essential due to that “other program is still running” but I was not using any program.

If removed the Book Essential,it will be hurt mechanically or not? Please help me asap.

Goto Filehippo.com and download a utility called unlocker. It basically view a processes thats attached to the device and you can unlock or kill the processes.