Hey guys,
I’ve spent the last 14hrs going through various pages on this forum, and googled almost every possible search term I could possible think of in hopes to find a solution for this problem. I’ll try to keep this as organized as organized as possible and provide as much information as I can.
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Hard drive: My Book Essentials 2TB - USB 2.0
What occured: I was transfering a group of project files (which added up to 17gb) from one of my WD 1TB My Book (last generation) external drives over to the new one and all was going well until I got an I/O device error from the 2TB My Book. I’ve had this hard drive for almost 4 months without any problems at all.
When I got the I/O device error, I safely ejected the drive, power cycled, and reconnected it (I also disconnected all other external drives to prevent any mixup). This time it wasn’t listed under My Computer but it showed up under Devices and Printers. Instead of showing up as My Book 03 (which is what I called it before) it shows up as My Book 1110. When I right click it, the only options that show up are: Eject, Create Shortcut, Troubleshoot (shows a ! within a yellow triangle), and Properties (pictured below).
If the above does not show, here’s a direct link: http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/355/rightclick.jpg
Within Computer Management I see the drive show up as (pictured below). There were no helpful option by right clicking any of the two spaces.
Disk 5
Unknown
1862.35 GB
Not Initialized
To the right it says: 1862.36 GB Unallocated
If the above does not show, here’s a direct link: http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5238/disk5.jpg
It doesn’t let me access any of the files within it and I have over 1.5TB worth of files inside this drive.
Things i’ve tried:
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I’ve tried using over 4 different USB Cables (2 of which work fine with my 2 other 1TB My Books).
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I’ve tried 3 different power cables from both a power strip and plugged directly into the wall.
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I’ve used different USB ports from my USB hub as well as directly into the computer.
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I restarted and shut down the computer as well.
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I plugged the hard drive into my laptop and another computer and it still shows up only under Devices and Printers.
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A number of solutions from these forums including:
- Installing WD SmartWare Utilities (VCD & Firmware)
- Installing WD SmartWare Software which I updated software on the drive and directed it towards the files.
- The above 2 options seem to have worked but nothing really changed. My HD was still only showing under devices.
- I tried using the WD SmartWare software but it would only find files from my computers hard drive.
Since trying all of the above I uninstalled WD SmartWare and now when I plug in the drive I get:
And this is how it looks under my Device Manager:
Links on this forum i’ve looked through (that I can remember):
- http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Book-for-PC/My-Book-1TB-Not-showing-up-and-no-error-msg/td-p/6584
- http://community.wdc.com/t5/Other-Externals/Can-t-download-drivers/m-p/15495
I’m currently stumped and running out of hair to pull out…
I’ve got a few files in there which I have yet to backup so I truly want to avoid having to reformat it. I’m also trying to avoid having to take out the actual hard drive since I don’t want to void my warranty.
Sorry if I forgot to post any other detail but if I did let me know and i’ll post it up.
I truly appreciate any and all help. Thank you.
