Good grief, if I could drop kick this thing back to Western Digital, I would. I bought this 3TB external drive almost two years ago and it has not worked properly from the start. After trying the customer service route (to no avail), I was left to my own devices (no pun intended) and trouble shot on my own. Needless to say, it was a total nightmare. All I wanted to do was hook the thing up to my router and feel like I was safely storing all my cr*p in yet another location, but alas, there is nothing easy in the world of technology I fear.
So here is my dilemma- I plug it in, connect to router, I get a minute or so with the whiteish light and then the solid red. I am hearing this repeated drive sound coming from the device like it starts running and then stops, starts and then stops… over and over and over and over. I tried letting it cool down over night as some have suggested. NOTHING. I tried replacing the power cord with another 12V input… NOTHING. I have tried connecting to the online dashboard, but it is saying it is not connected. I have tried resetting… I have tried everything short of setting the darn thing on fire and watching it die a slow and satisfying death. Can anyone fix this? I see that I am not alone in this struggle. Is Western Digital addressing this issue at all??? RECALL MAYBE??? Geeze. Will you please just send me another device, I would be more than happy to send this lemon back. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Moderator, please move this message out of the MPW forum to the appropriate one; if you can determine what it is…
Well, your post is another example of not understanding the whole situation, and that a little knowledge can be dangerous!
First of all, this forum is for the My Passport Wireless drive, and since there is not a 3TB version, I pretty much KNOW you are in the wrong forum. But, just in case you do have a MPW 2TB drive, these drives are not intended for connecting to a router.
Secondly, there are good reasons (other than blaming WD) why your HD cannot be connected to your router.:
Maybe your router cannot accept drives higher than 2TB; many can’t.
Disk thrashing/start-stop noise indicates there is not enough power to spin up the drive, and in this case it should have been removed from router right away and not put back on – ever, until you got some good advice… This action could have severely damaged the HD; who knows.
It sounds like you have an externally powered HD, and not one powered (like a small portable drive) by the router USB port. So, assuming you powered it before connecting it to your router, I am betting that the router cannot accept drives higher than 2TB.
The should have been connected to the Win PC and not the router, anyway. So, I will suggest doing that, EXCEPT that the no higher than 2 TB drive limitation also pertains to older versions of Windows, too. Any OS lower than Win 8 could have this issue. So, before connecting the drive to PC, find out from user manual for drive if it has features in it that allows for connecting to older PCs running Win 7 or lower.
Also get user manual and check website for your router to learn more about drive size limitations. Problem is, maybe at time drive was made there were not drives higher than 2TB so mention of this.
So, you don’t have a lemon drive, but you did get bad advice from others up until now.
Check out these points here, and get back and let us know what you have found out.
Hard drives to go bad. But it seems there is a rash of people having the front LED go white or red. May want to read through the following thread started previously to see if anything there applies:
Otherwise you may want to contact WD Support (http://support.wdc.com/contact.aspx?lang=en) and see what they suggest. Usually a front red LED means there is something wrong with the hard drive.
Mike,
Thank you for the detailed information. I posted to this forum because it
was labeled external hard drive/ my passport. I have an external hard
drive so it was a little misleading. I later saw the My Cloud forum option,
but could not see a way to “change” the forum after I submitted it. I see
from scrolling down that several others have made this mistake, so maybe a
new forum name would help- especially for those not tech savvy or
particularly familiar with the WD product line.
On to the issues- I formatted the external hard drive for my MAC and
initially, when I set it up, I could open it, view the pictures that
converted over, open the online dash and see the photos there and it seemed
everything was working- so why would I think there would ever be an issue-
the whole point was to have it working in the background? It sat up there
on my cabinet forever, me thinking it was doing its job when in reality, it
had stopped working somewhere along the way. I venture to guess most
people should not have to be rocket scientists or even moderately tech
savvy to set a drive up to save via a router, but apparently even people
well versed in the field can’t seem to make this thing work. I did look at
my router handbook and is CAN accept external drives bigger than 2TB. The
disc spinning did not happen in the first week when the router was on my
desk… I doubt it was happening in the first month as I was still
periodically checking the online dash and could view recent material. It
started somewhere along the way. Who knows when. My router is not in a
place that is readily accessible without a ladder now, hence the reason I
couldn’t hear when it started skipping. The router was still functioning
well and I have been running fine for over a year without major
interruption.
I went through it all over again with a tech on the phone this eve.
Even after giving him all my router info, he couldn’t figure it out, so he
too thinks it is a drive problem. (No kidding.) He issued a RMA and off
it will go to the big WD graveyard in the sky. Good riddens! Lol. I
appreciate you trying to get to the bottom of it, but all those things were
already explored with no positive outcome. Sometimes it really is a
lemon… And sometimes things just stop working for whatever reason. I am
the kind of person who likes to try to figure things out and problem solve
but this has just consumed WAY too much of my time. I give up. I guess
you can remove this question now. Total bummer.
One final thought about this whole thing: If you have a Mac, and formatted the drive for a Mac (and never connected it to a Windows PC) It should work again connected to your Mac. Also, if you have an Apple router, the drive ought to work on it as well.
BUT, on the other hand, ff you you do not have an Apple router, but rather one of the many other brands (that is not explicitly made for a Mac), it only accepts drives formatted for Windows (NTFS format), then herein lies the problem. I believe. Your router may simply not be able to read Mac formatted drives; it likely can only read Windows-formatted drives.
Before sending drive back via RMA, check back with WD support on this issue/question. And, when you call back, ask to speak to someone in the next level, Level 2. My experience with Level 1 people has not been real good; they barely know what they are talking about, I am sorry to have to say this. I ALWAYS ask to speak with Level 2.
Sometimes it really is a