Missing WD Drive Manager

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
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In 2010 I bought myself a 2TB My Book Studio II external hard drive to hold my Time Machine backup. I used the proprietory ‘WD Drive Manager’ to configure the drive as a 1TB RAID 1 mirrored device.

Every now and then I would use WD Drive Manager to check the HDD status. No problems ever reported.

Recently I discovered that the WD Drive Manager icon in my Menu bar was missing. I searched my iMac but I have only found the WD Drive Manager Uninstaller. WD Drive Manager seems to have been deleted somehow.

Okay, it may turn out to be no great deal but I wonder if this has anything to do with MacOS 10.6 El Capitan? I also wonder if I may need WD Drive Manager at some point in the future. For instance, if I need to do any maintenance/repairs to the Studio II because that is what I used to set up the RAID. Or perhaps if one of the drives fails and I need to install a replacement? WD Drive Manager let me see the serial numbers of both the internal physical drives.

If I am likely to need it, may I download it from this web site?

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Hi Hoof_Hearted,

You may download it from the link below. You would need this software in order to manage the drive(RAID, status of HDD etc.)

https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=114&lang=en#WD_downloads

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Thank you.

Will that work also with my new 12TB My Book Duo ? It arrived yesterday.

I’ve got it up and running and formatted HFS+ Extended (journaled) but I would like to set it up as RAID 1. Disk Utility’s RAID Assistant doesn’t seem to want to let me do this.

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Hi again

I downloaded WD Drive Manager 3.1.0.14 tonight. The installer appeared on my desktop as expected. I ran it and the Installer reported a successful installation. After restarting my iMac the WD icon appeared only briefly to the right side of my menu bar then vanished immediately. Again I can find no trace of the app on my Mac. Only the installer and an Uninstaller.

Two possibilities occur to me. The app is 2013 vintage. So it could be that it is not compatible with MacOS Sierra. Or it could be that, because I have my My Book Studio II temporarily disconnected whilst I try to sort out the RAID 1 issue on my new My Book Duo 12TB device, it is disabling or deleting itself?

When I sort out the RAID 1 on the new My Book Duo I plan to daisy chain my Studio II to the back of my new Duo prior to migrating my Time Machine backup to the larger capacity drive.

Hope you can help.

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Same problem when trying to move my My Book Studio II to a OS Sierra iMac from an older computer.
Couldn’t find a single hint anywhere up to now.

1 Like
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I’ve taken the plunge and, instead of waiting until I had got the new drive up and running until it did what I intended it to do, I have jumped the gun and plugged my Studio II into the back of the new Duo using the USB 2 cable that previously went into the back of my Mac.

Good news. The Studio II responded immediately (full white bar on the from) before I could even get behind my Mac to start it up.

Searching for WD Drive Manager again it still doesn’t show in my Menu bar. Ran WD Drive Manager Installer once again. Still no icon in the Menu bar. However I did find ‘WD Drive Utilities 2.0.5.18’ instead. I swear it wasn’t there before.

Opened WD Drive Utilities and wow! I now have RAID Management too, amongst other things. WD Drive Utilities looks a lot like the app that I dragged onto my Desktop from the Duo before reformatting it as HFS+. Downside is it can’t see my Studio II. Only the Duo.

I can now see both my external drives, older Studio II and new Duo, on my Desktop. The new one is now a 6TB RAID 1. The older, drive appears on my desktop as it did before and, so far at least, seems to be fully accessible.

For me, this is terrific. Almost what I set out to achieve.

I still can’t work out why WD Drive Manager 3.1.0.14 (for the Studio II) vanishes as it does however this was a pre-existing mystery and less urgent than my need for greater backup space.

My iMac now has 3TB Internal storage so I have partitioned my new 6GTB RAID 1 Drive into two 3GB partitions using Disk Utility, one partition exclusively for my Time Machine backup.

After I have worked out the best way to transfer my Time Machine backup from the Studio II to the Duo (I have a hunch there is more to it than dragging and dropping files) I think I will leave it maybe 6 months or a year before I repurpose the Studio II as an expansion for my PS 4.

FYI - A year ago I went from a Mid 2007 iMac to a late Retina 5k 2015 model. This meant I went from a 750GB Mac to a 3TB Mac. My Studio II is 1TB RAID.