My Book Essential 3TB Drive Not Working When Connected To Network Media Tank Popcorn Hour A-100

drougge · October 15, 2015, 1:15am

External Western Digital My Book Essential 3TB Drive Not Working When Connected To Network Media Tank Popcorn Hour A-100

I plug it in and I get a “USB Failed” message. How do I make this work?

On the networkmediatank forum they tell me it doesn’t work because it’s a hidden VCD partition

on the external drive and that i need to disable it to make it work.

The problem is that i can’t find the vcd partition. I updated the firmware and tried to follow the

guides that are out there but still don’t see the VCD.

Have i missed som crucial steps or do I need to format the external drive?

Should I uninstall everything in windows and try to redo all the steps?

Thankful for guidance in this matter

heid4055 · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

take a look at

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/passport-vcd.html

Whenever I get a WD Drive, the very first thing I do is FORMAT by right clicking on the drive in my computer…

Does this help?

Kinetic_Blue · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

Why do you format it, it comes out of the box as NTFS?

heid4055 · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

It comes with additional software that I dont want. Also by formatting, it doesnt automatically pop up with smartware.

Kinetic_Blue · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

Does that mean you are able to utilize ALL 2Tb of the hard drive and not just 1.81Tb?

heid4055 · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

No youll still get 1.81. I just like raw storage and dont like dealing with extra software that comes with every drive thats all!

See what Im saying?

christyking80 · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

Hi there. I’m having a slightly different problem. I have a 3 TB My Essential hard drive that’s connected to my WD network drive. I used the online program software to format the hard drive, but now I can only see/use 1.8 TB of my drive. Its formatted to NTSF. What must be done?

Joe_S · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

I don’t know if this will shed any light on it or not. http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/02/18/understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx

Joe

christyking80 · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

Awesome. Well that explains that!!! Thank you so much Joe_S. I have one more hiccup though. My WD My Book Essential won’t let me convert it to a dynamic disk, or at least my computer says it can’t be done. Would you by chance have any insight into this?

Joe_S · October 15, 2015, 2:31am

I don’t know about that part. Maybe some third party partitioning tool will work.

Joe