I have a new My Book Essntial USB 2.0/3.0 hdd and it seems to prevent Windows 7 from booting up. With the drive plugged in, the boot screen is stuck with a blinking cursor at the upper left hand side. With the drive unplugged, Windows 7 boots fine. I’m not sure what the issue is, I’ve reset my BIOS settings and installed the WD SES Device Driver. I am trying to restore the drive to factory settings but WD Smartware prevents me from restoring it. Any help is greatly appreciated.
It will prevent it because you have usb drive enabled as a startup boot option before the internal hard drive. It has happened to me plenty of times. You can do two things. Only plug your my book after windows loads or go into your boot options and make sure your INTERNAL hard drive is boot option number 1.
The reason windows hangs is because when your computer is booting with your my book plugged in it keeps searching all 3tb for files. Its indexing and it will take awhile!
Hope this helps!
Attn heid4055: I don’t believe that’s his problem. I have the exact same issue with two Mybook 3.0 2TB drives. Extremely frustrating. I know for a fact my Dell xps 17 bios is set to boot internal drives, then DVD, then USB. I see no activity on the drive lights if it was indexing and this happens whether I have a hub or not in use. Blinking cursor and my computer is like it is in molasses. If I just pull the USB cable it boots right up. I can also boot with a USB 2.0 buffalo 1tb drive with no problem. It is just the mybook 3.0 Drives that cause the hang. I’m very frustrated and going to try as a last resort to swap the foxconn cables that came with them.
I am having the same problem but I am using a ITB Home Book . It doesn’t matter which Windows OPS I use, (XP.Vista, Win 7) I have exactly the same problem booting up. The only way around it, is by switching the hard drive ON/Off and wait until it completes booting up. Pain in the Arse.
There are other problems with this drive aside from booting up. I’ve already had to replace power supply and the software installed with the drive interferes with other software applications particularly when it goes into hibernation. When the drive goes into hibernation software hangs requiring software to be closed. Windows doesn’t recognise drive. Drive won’t switch off and at times will not turn on. Drive goes into hibernation and won’t come out of hibernation. WD really need to pull their fingers out and start doing something about these problems. I have decided to transfer all my data to a Seagate drive and return the WD. No one should have to go through this.
