My Book drive failure, anything to be done?

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi all,

My drive recently seems to have failed. I could no longer access through Windows Explorer, and couldn’t bring up the dashboard. Strangely, I could see my files using dos, and also could still watch some movies using my Shield.

I tried pulling the plug and restarting, but now I no longer see it on the network. Before I pulled the plug, it had a blinking green light, now it’s a solid blue.

Is there anything I can do? Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks.

2

Hi @fred99,

Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask

3

Hi Keerti,
I haven’t opened a case, I thought since the drive is after end of support, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask them, thanks for mentioning.

I have been reading other posts, and saw how to do a reset, which I did, but had no effect.
Still solid blue light, with intermittent yellow flash.
Also noticed the drive is quite warm along the top.
I notice the network LED at the back are flashing normally, which means there’s a network connection, so it’s strange I can’t see the drive on the network.
I’ll try attaching directly to the computer, just to see if anything pops up.

Thanks.

4

I tried attaching the drive to my computer, but the computer doesn’t see it, although the LED shows that there is a connection.

The blue light comes on immediately when I plug in the power, so obviously it’s not going through any bootup processes.

I guess it’s done.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d welcome them.

Thanks.

5

Where did you look ?

Windows Explorer or Windows Disk Management ?

My Books have hardware encryption … if you remove the hard drive from the enclosure and connect it to a PC then the drive and it’s contents will not be recognized in Windows Explorer without a decryption key.

If the Hard Drive is not faulty, then it will/should appear in Disk Management … but the only option available will be to format/partition it. Which your PC will then recognize in Windows Explorer, but of course … all Data on the hard drive will be gone.

6

Hardware encryption is true for the My Book but not for the My Book Live. WD is fond of using similar names for completely different products.

My Book: WD My Book External Desktop Hard Drive Storage 3 TB - 18 TB | Western Digital
My Book Live: https://products.wdc.com/library/AAG/ENG/4178-705202.pdf

7

Hi JoeySmyth,

I had looked in Explorer, (expected to see something under network) but now I looked in Disk Management, just in case.
It’s a MyBookLive, so it’s connected by ethernet.

I do hear it rumble a bit and vibrate if I get close and listen, but like I said, LED immediately goes to blue, so I take that as meaning it’s not booting properly. I’ll have to research later how to remove the drive.

Anyway, thanks for your help, and nice seeing you again.