WD MyBook Live possible HDD failure?

Hello all,

I had a WD MyBook Live which has been working well (to my knowledge) for quite some time. Over the last few weeks, when the drive was plugged into the router is has been causing the router to have limited/no internet access (tested this, plugged in the router does not perform, when not plugged in it works fine). 

I would like to try to run diagnostics or try to at the very least format everything and start fresh however the WD SmartWare does not detect the drive at all (Back Up and Retrieve tabs are greyed out) and on the Home tab there is only “Drop Box” showed. I plugged the drive directly into the tower (as I can do with my GoFlex from Seagate) and it does not apear in the My Network Places from the C: drive.

The light on the front of the drive starts up blue, goes to a yellow/green (my best guess is the WD equivilent of amber) and then blinks green. In research, blinking green doesn’t seem to have a good solutiuon and possibly means it is being indexed? I did try to reset the drive by holding the reset button and then powering down the drive but that doesn’t change anything. 

So, how can I:

A - access the drive to see what files are on it. 

B - possibly format the drive and start over.

Read the manual, so you will know what the different LED colors mean.

If even afterwards you believe you have a bad hard drive, I would do as follow:

  • Access dahboard, see if all is ok

  • backup all my data if possible

  • maybe upgrade firmware if needed

  • reset to factory default is needed

and last, if you need to get the files, or recover the OS, or even replace the hard drive. Follow this guide, there are two versions.

http://community.wd.com/t5/My-Book-Live/GUIDE-How-to-unbrick-a-totally-dead-MBL/td-p/435724