I have 2 WD My Book 2TB hard drives but when I plugin one of them while the other is plugged in my computer doesn’t show it in My Computer but in WD SmartWare it shows both of them but the second one that I plugin it gives me the error “No Writable WD SmartWare Partition Found” so I unplugged both of them and then plugged in the second hard drive that gave the error message and it worked and then I plugged in the first one and then that one gave me the error message. I disabled WD SmartWare to see if that would fix it but it didn’t and I have also updated firmware on each hard drive. Has anyone else had this problem?
1 Like
Alright, you are having a drive conflict, so here’s what you need to do:
1.) Click START, and then right click on MY COMPUTER. Select MANAGE – this will bring up the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT WINDOW.
2.) On the pane furthest to the left in the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT window, there should be an option for DEVICE MANAGER. Click on DEVICE MANAGER.
3.) Now, the DEVICE MANAGER should open in the middle pane of the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT window. Click on the arrow next to the DISK DRIVES option in the middle pane. Make sure that both External Hard Drives are listed, i.e. WD MY BOOK 1110 USB DEVICE.
4.) With the DISK DRIVES option selected, back over on the left hand pane of the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT window, select DISK MANAGEMENT. DISK MANAGEMENT will now open up in the middle pane of the COMPUTER MANAGEMENT window.
5.) In the DISK MANAGEMENT window, scroll down until you see your unrecognized EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE. It will be showing a status of OFFLINE. You need to right click on this option and select GO ONLINE.
There you go, hopefully that will fix ya up. I had the same problem and worked on it ALL NIGHT, before I broke down and called Western Digital. They had to transfer me to a senior technician, because I had tried every ‘typical’ fix.
I felt like a total dork when this worked.
3 Likes
Well no work for me. I have Three “Essentials” external USB drives. a 2TB and a1.5 TB that I bought fairly recently - and a 1 TB that I bought perhaps 2 years ago. The newer ones have no conflict. But as soon as I plug the older one in, then I can no longer read from either of the newer ones. I have tried the above suggestion. They both show up and indicate that they are online. But i continue to get Write failure messages from the drive that the newer one is assigned to, and I can no longer read the file contents. I am sure it has something to do with this older Essentials drive since the two newer ones can both be connected at the same time and have no problem.
I had the same problem and your solution worked perfectly for me. Thanks - you saved me many frustrating hours!. -Arlin
foreman01 wrote:
Well no work for me. I have Three “Essentials” external USB drives. a 2TB and a1.5 TB that I bought fairly recently - and a 1 TB that I bought perhaps 2 years ago. The newer ones have no conflict. But as soon as I plug the older one in, then I can no longer read from either of the newer ones. I have tried the above suggestion. They both show up and indicate that they are online. But i continue to get Write failure messages from the drive that the newer one is assigned to, and I can no longer read the file contents. I am sure it has something to do with this older Essentials drive since the two newer ones can both be connected at the same time and have no problem.
Sorry, if this sounds dumb, but what happens if you plug in the older drive, first, and then plug in the newer drives?
