WD My Book Essential - Drive won't load up

Hello all,

I’m really hopeing someone here is able to help me with this issue I’m having. I undertand the issue is self-inflicted so no need to tell me that.

I had my drive plugged in and I was transferring movies from a drive on my computer (D:) to the external drive (F:). It was taking too long to transfer so I’d clicked Cancel and was waiting for a while for it to cancel out. It didn’t so after waiting a minute or so, I just unplugged the usb cable. A couple of hours later I was trying to do this transfer again except the drive won’t load up the way it would normally. Here’s what’s happening:

a) The drive doesn’t open up an AutoPlay window like it used to

b) The drive is no longer viewable in Windows Explorer the way it was before. Right now it says “Local Drive (F:)” when it used to say “My Book (F:)”

c) If I try and run any process where it may need to access the external drive, that process will stop responding… until I disconnect the drive, then everything else carries on like it normally would.

I have tried several things already and have been troubleshooting for most of the day. I believe it’s the Master File Table that’s pooched so if anyone knows how to fix it, that might be a start. In ‘My Computer’ I can see ‘Local Drive (F:)’ but if I right click on it or double click it, the process will stop responding… that is, until I disconnect the drive. Then I’ll get a prompt that the drive I selected is inaccessable.

/frustrated in edmonton

Hello,

The file system is corrupted as long with the MBR. You need to get the WD DLG tool and write zeroes to the drive, then your computer will see the drive as a unallocated unit, you need to format the drive. This should solve the problem.