I have an old WD My Book World Edition ii NAS drive. It’s been fine for years, plugged into the back of my EE hub with a folder share mapped to a drive on my PC.
I have just changed PC and I cannot get it to work again.
Setup is Windows 11 Home, PC ethernet to EE Hub, NAS ethernet to back of EE hub.
In windows I can goto This PC/Network and I can see my NAS device listed under Storage. I can click this and access it’s web page, log into it, see user accounts, shares etc…but they don’t mean a lot me.
I need to access the Download folder on this device. Previously it was mapped to Z: on my PC, but if a try to map a network drive, no devices are listed under network.
I have the NAS drive, and hub set to use a static IP. I’ve disabled firewall, i’ve made sure that SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support is enabled.
Any help appreciated, I have 15 years of work on this drive.
If your Windows is 24H2, then you should change the settings for SMB Signing listed in this article.
Since you’re on Home edition, you may not have access to gpedit (Group Policy Editor) so you should try the following (also in the linked article).
If you’re running Windows 11 Home edition, the guest fallback option is still enabled by default, so you’re probably not reading this blog post. But if for some reason it is on, or you need to turn off SMB signing due to some third-party NAS, you will need to use PowerShell to configure your machine because there is no gpedit tool by default. To do this:
a. On the Start Menu search, type powershell then under the Windows PowerShell app, click Run as administrator. Accept the elevation prompt.
b. To disable SMB signing requirement, type:
Set-SmbClientConfiguration -RequireSecuritySignature $false
d. Hit enter, then hit Y to accept.
c. To disable guest fallback, type:
Set-SmbClientConfiguration -EnableInsecureGuestLogons $true
e. Hit enter, then hit Y to accept.
At this point you will be working if Signing or Guest were your real problems.
Your WD My Book World Edition ii is still working, but Windows 11 won’t talk to it the same way because it only runs on the old SMB1 protocol, and Windows shuts that off by default. The fact that you can still pull up the web interface means your data’s fine. To get back into your files, make sure SMB 1.0/CIFS Client is turned on in Windows Features, then go straight to it by typing \\[NAS_IP]\Download (like \\192.168.1.50\Download) in the Run box or File Explorer. If it asks for login info, use the username and password you set up on the NAS, or try Guest if you never used a password before. Once you’re in, right-click and map it back to a drive letter like Z:. Just be sure your PC and NAS are on the same subnet and the NAS is set to the WORKGROUP workgroup. And once you’ve got access again, I’d back everything up to a newer NAS or even an external drive, because this old WD depends on outdated and insecure protocols.
