Help Accessing My Book Essential 2.0

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi,

I have a My Book Essential 2.0 that my Windows Vista computer won’t read. It connects and will allow me to safely remove the hardware but I don’t see the drive under my computer. It is shown in device management. I’ve also downloaded the software for it from WD but the install software shows “udefined” even after Flash and Java updates. I know this is an issue other WD harddrive owners have but I don’t know how to fix it or access my drive. It passes all the tests in the Data Life Diagnostic program. The drive is however recognized on my Macbook  and works fine there. I had to reformat it a while and am wondering if the drive is temperamental and will only be recognized on the computer (Windows XP) I formatted it on? I’m just trying to get some pictures off of it and don’t want to have to reformat and lose what I have to do so to get a Windows computer to read it when it’s already a kind of computer I barely use. Do you think this is a formatting or if there’s a way I can format the drive, without losing my data, to be compatible with my Macbook and a Windows computer? Thanks!

2

You can check at this and see if it works http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1403/session/L3RpbWUvMTM3MDk2Mzg0My9zaWQvcm5PeCp0c2w%3D or http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=101&sid=34&lang=en, but my advice is that you can plug your my book on a pc that recognizes it and backup the info, then format it, as an advice format it in fat32 and then try again.

3

Given Windows XP can be a little fickle with USB devices, I would go into the Device Manager and remove the drive from ‘Disk Drives’.  Then unplug the drive and reconnect it; this forces Windows to re-discover the hardware and load the driver for it.