My Book Essential Causing Win 10 To Hang/Reboot Computer

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
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I recently picked up a two 2 TB WD My Book Essential 1140 drives at an estate sale. They both have low power on hours and the long tests on both of them passed. I’m using one of them now as a backup. I did most of the backups (copying from smaller external drives) on a Dell Inspiron 3583 laptop, and also copied some files from an older Dell OptiPlex 170L desktop with Windows XP on it. When I went to run a Windows backup on an Acer Aspire 1640 from 2008 running Windows 10, it automatically rebooted half way through. I ran the backup two more times, where it also rebooted and soft locked Windows. Even running a virus scan on the My Book caused the computer to crash. Also, trying to copy files from the old external drive that I originally used with that same system over to the My Book caused the computer to restart 1/4 of the way through. I never had an issue with the old external drives, so why was it crashing with the My Book?

Turns out the problem was with the onboard USB controller (nForce 610i) not playing nicely with the My Book. I had a spare USB 2.0 PCI card laying around from 2005. I popped it in the computer, attached the My Book to it, ran a backup and had no issues what so ever. Even the virus scan completed. So my question is… How can I fix the computer or Windows 10 so that the My Book works correctly with the onboard USB controller? Using the PCI card is fine, and I may even buy a USB 3.0 PCIe card, but there maybe times when I might need to plug it directly into the front of the computer, which of course plugs directly into the motherboard.

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Any suggestions?

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In this case, enter the BIOS setup program and disable the legacy support for USB Mass Storage devices. This option may or may not be available in your BIOS setup program. It may also be labeled differently in different BIOS setup programs.

To disable this option on an Award BIOS motherboard, do the following.

  1. Boot up or reboot your PC.
  2. Press DEL to enter BIOS setup.
  3. Go to Advanced Peripherals.
  4. Select USB Storage Function.
  5. Change its value to Disabled.
  6. Press ESC.
  7. Press F10 to save changes and exit.
  8. Confirm with Enter.

Another thing you can do is try connecting the HDD to a different USB port.

  1. Power off PC.
  2. Disconnect all USB devices including the keyboard and mouse.
  3. Connect the HDD to USB port 0.
  4. Power on PC and check if it hangs.
  5. If it hangs, power off PC.
  6. Connect the HDD to USB port 1.
  7. Power on PC and check if it hangs.
  8. Repeat until you find a port at which the PC no longer hangs.
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I think I tried checking for the legacy support option in the BIOS, but couldn’t find it.

The My Book works fine with the USB PCI expansion card that I installed, just not with the onboard USB controller. I never had a problem using my old external drives with it, but I’m starting to think that the onboard controller has issues with USB 3.0 devices as I’ve experienced a similar occurrence while copying to a USB 3.0 flash drive.