500gb my book pro, connection issues

Hi everyone

first of all, sorry for the long message but I feel it’s better to be more detailed than not.

I bought a 500gb my book pro late 2007 with my first Mac to use as a backup drive. As time went on I have used it for various things, but eventually it took place as my time machine drive with the advent of Leopard.

I used to connect to my macbook using Firewire 400 and never had any problems, until about a year ago when the drive stopped reading in finder. The drive would power on, and I could hear it whirring, but the blue lights flashed as if the computer was asleep and it wouldn’t show in finder.

Eventually, I don’t remember exactly how, I managed to get it to show up again, reformatted, and began using it as a time machine again.

Now, just before Christmas 2009 I bought a 27" iMac as my main machine, and formatted the my book pro again. This time using Firewire 800, I have been using it as my time machine with no problems. Unforunately, due to the nature of my work my hard drive has rapidly filled and so I needed a bigger drive for time machine - more on that later.

About a week ago, the my book pro stopped showing in finder again, and no matter what I try I can’t get it to show up. It is behaving exactly as before, with the lights appearing as if the computer is asleep.

Now, due to the problems I was having and the fact the drive was full, I decided to order a brand new My Book Studio 2TB. This arrived today, and my plan was to daisy chain the firewire 800 devices into the back of the iMac, as it only has 1 firewire 800 port. So, I plugged back in the my book pro, and it still didn’t show up. I thought I’d try my luck anyway, and so plugged the new drive into the back of the Pro - the Studio showed up, weirdly enough, but the Pro didn’t still. 

So, I switched the daisy chaining around in the vain hope that might fix it, still no joy. The Pro is still behaving as if the computer is asleep though… powering up and whirring, but with blue flashing lights. The Studio works perfectly and I’m really happy with it, but I really need the Pro to work as I need the storage for session files and I can’t afford to shell out for another drive after buying the Studio.

I’m at my wits end, pleaaaase help me!

Many thanks

Mark

(btw if it helps, I’m running OSX 10.6.2, 8GB Ram, 3.33GHZ Core 2 Duo, 2TB HDD)

FYI, the drive doesn’t show up in disk utility either

Since there’s been no replies, maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this. You can do so either by phone or email.  You may need to RMA the drive, anyway.  But they’ll be able to tell you.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?lang=en

Wow, this is the same scenario as mine. There is no help? did you call  WD? Did they help you?

I JUST SPOKE TO A TECH FRIEND  THAT TOLD  THAT THE DRIVE IS SIMPLY DEAD! AND NOT TO TRY TO GET IT TO WORK UNLESS I WANT TO DO MORE DAMAGE.