I bought one My Book Studio Edition II (2tb) the last month by amazon, and I have the same problem. I checked all the suggestions made by users but I cant fix the problem. The drive still dissappearing after going to sleep. My drive has the last firmware update and a good cable. Please I need HElp.
Just bought a My Book Studio Edition II (2TB) and connect it via eSata.
Had exactly the same problem described by everyone here. Once the drive goes into standby mode (LED blink once every 4 sec) The drive letter disappears from Windows. Only way to get it back is to power cycle it using the Power Button behind the enclosure.
I have updated to the latest JMicron drivers, the latest WD firmware. Nothing seems to help.
The level of support/features from WD for eSata seems so limited.
I’ve found a Microsoft Support article on the SATA issue.
After installing the hotfix, it seems to solve my problem of WD My Book Studio Edition II (2TB) not waking up after it goes to sleep.
The cause as described by MS:
When you resume a computer from sleep or from hibernation, the SATA hard disk drivers require the SATA hard disks to be ready within 10 seconds. However, a large SATA hard disk may take longer than 10 seconds to be ready. In this situation, the resume operation times out.
While we are not sleeping or hibernating the computer, it seems like WD My Book Studio Edition II might need more than 10secs to wake up, hence Windows SATA drivers might report an operation time out thus removing the drive letter.
Mine does it on XP unfortunately, but that fix may help the Windows 7 / Server 2008 people!
Thank you for the replies. From an engineering perspective, I understand what you are saying regarding cable lengths, versus signal strength and other issues with longer length and how that could be the issue.
There are a number of reasons that I don’t believe that what you stated is my issue:
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I have already updated my “MyBook” to the latest firmware and still have the issue from time to time.
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Despite using one of those adapters and a short cable from it to the drive, the drive functions quite well if it is not left idle. I have not had any data corruption or difficulties running the drive and I use it for data storage and running Virtual Machines every working day during software development and support.
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The drive only presents problems when it is left idle.
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I have noted that after going to sleep, the light on the front can be active, indicating that it sees the request from the computer (it begins the “Kit Car” light cycle), yet the drive inside the enclosure appears to fail to start.
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Having a scheduled job to write the date and time to a file on the drive at 8 minute intervals has virtually eliminated the problem. (10 minutes intervals almost eliminated it.)
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It is stated above that all WD sata drives monitor the power signal from the data cable. A very easy and quick search found the specification for the PHY layer for eSATA and it is dual differential signals with NO POWER SIGNAL WHATSOEVER. In-between the PHY layer and the LINK layer there IS a slumber signal which REQUIRES the PHY to become completely idle and there is a signal from the PHY interface back for a COMWAKE_DETECT signal to wake up the inteface if the other end starts talking. Perhaps the interface in the computer FOLLOWING THE STANDARD and going into slumber state causes the drive to believe that it is disconnected and it does not wake up properly when signals are re-applied.
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I have my power settings to always be on (except for monitors).
Reasons why it may be:
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I am using an Intel controller on the Dell MOBO.
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I am using an adapter bracket with external cable.
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The drive may be overheating despite being vertical and raised from the desk, but I can’t tell, as the SMART data is NOT passed through on the eSata interface.
Perhaps I’ll try sitting it on a muffin fan or something similar to force airflow and see if the results vary.
Well, I can definitely prove that this is not an eSATA issue. I have the MyBook 1TB connected to a Fedora Linux box via USB 2.0 and I have the same problem. The drive has completely disappeared from /dev and rebooting the server does not help. The only thing that fixes the issue is power cycling the drive. None of my drives are configured to spin down on a signal from the OS, so I know it is not a software issue. I have the drive sitting vertical on top of the minitower and that could be causing an overheating condition. I will try moving the drive to a cooler location and see if the problem occurs again. This issue is very frustrating because it seems to occur randomly. I can go weeks and days without any problems and then the drive suddenly disappears.
I have the same problem, both at work, and home.
At home, I have a 1TB WD HomeEdition, that works fine using USB and FireWire. After connecting it with a ESATA cable, it stated to disappear from my computer (I have “Turn harddisk of” to “Never”). I am using Win 7 64 bit at home.
At work, I was using Windows XP, and had my 1TB (not the same as at home) connected with a ESATA cable. This has been working fine for months (ever since I connected it using ESATA).
A couple of days ago, I installed Windows 7 at work, and now I also get the disconnect problem there.
At home, the WD drive, and computer is located in a shed outside my house. The temperature there is about 8 degree celcius, so overheating is not an option.
To me, it seems like WD drives don’t like Windows 7, but I can see other people having the same problems both on XP, and Linux, so I guess I’m wrong.
I hope nobody suggest using FireWire, as this is just too slow. When trying to back up my home computer, using Win 7 backup, I stopped it after 3 days, and then it was just 54% ready. This was when I connected my WD drive using ESATA, and the backup was done in less than 24 hours.
It seems like something goes wrong in the WD drive itself, when using ESATA. When I restart to get my drive back, I have to pull the power cord, and reinsert it, or else the drive is not recognized at all.
I have mine sitting on a 4" muffin fan, noisy, but effective. When I do lots of data manipulation on the drive (defrag, large backups, doing something intensive in a virtual machine hosted on the drive etc.), I can *feel* how hot it gets with my hand *over* the enclosure. This is with a *green* WD drive! I have since noticed a correlation between doing something intensive (like the defrags that were scheduled to run at night), the temperature and the disappearing drive.
The muffin fan is too noisy to leave on all the time, so I have taken to turning it on when I *know* I’m going to run a “hot” operation. I suppose I could put it under the desk in a box or drawer to muffle the noise for testing. So far, it seems to have mitigated the disappearing problem. I wonder if leaving the sides (cover) off the drive would help.
I may be moving my drive into a similar enclosure that has cooling if I can’t find a solution to using their enclosure.
Based on more recent posts, I suspect there are multiple issues.
WD support was just useless.
i have a virtualized windows 2003 server and i bought My Book Essential 1.5T for backup purposes.
server crashes each time during the schdeuled backup at random times.
some time on 10% and some time 60% backup is done,and server crashes,
only problem is with backup harddrive (MY Book Essential) server works fine with other backup options i.eoverthe network.
i have updated the firmware aswell.
it looks like my book stops respodning after some time or goes to sleep or something.
If any of you’s get solution for this issue please post it.
Regards
Thanks
I’m one of many people affected by this issue.
I have a MyBook 1.5 TB attached to my Dell Latitude through an eSATA connection. The Dell systems have a disk controller made by a little known company called Intel which doesn’t appear on the list of supported controllers.
The drive regularly disconnects itself during operation, usually in the middle of READ or WRITE operations. As an example, this morning it abandoned ship in the middle of copying a 6GB VM image to it.
The cable is the recommended length (it is the cable which shipped with the drive, by the way) and has no connection problems.
It exhibits the same behaviour on multiple systems - the problem is not limited to my own system.
It makes it totally unsuitable for its intended purpose, which is to act as a backup drive to contain VM and backup images.
The issue was reported to WD when I initially got the drive, but the response was to fault the hardware to which it was connected and I see that continues despite the variety of reports here of the same problem on multiple hardware configurations.
If it said on the box “only works as expected with certain controllers” I could have made an appropriate decision on its purchase.
I have no real hope for a fix for this or even a response, since my drive is a year old and I am running XP SP3, so I guess I’m just expressing my disappointment in this product.
In the interests of accuracy, I have to correct something I said above - the cable did not ship with the drive, it was purchased with it.
I too have the same problem using eStata although the drive works fine using USB. This problem did not happen on my old system using the same Windows 7 64 bit OS. The difference in the two systems is the controller. My old system had external eSata connected to the intel controller. That system, like my new one, has two internal HD’s in a Raid array. In my old system, the external My Book showed up in the BIOS as a non-raid HD. I never had a problem with MY Book sleeping or disappearing. The difference in my new system is that the external eSata port is connected to a jmicron controller. The internal HD’s are connect to an intel contoller. So, my only conclusion is that the MY Book drive does not like the jmicron contoller. The system came with the jmicron xxx.49 driver. That driver caused the system to hang when transfering large files. So, I downloaded the xxx.59 esata driver. That driver solved the system hang problems, and I thought all was right in the world again. Then, a day later or so, I noticed that the My Book external drive started dissappearing. Rebooting and power cycling the drive what the only way to solve the problem. I have tried all different power setting options, and not surprisingly, nothing seems to work. The My Book drive doesn’t even show up as an installed HD in the BIOS (althoug it shows up fine in Windows) - only the internal drives on the intel controller show up in BIOS. So, I don’t think disabling HD sleep in the power options will have any effect. My BIOS settings for the controller is set to RAID. I don’t know if that is for the intel controller or the jmicron controller. I am using a Pegatron mother board. All four of the intel eSata connections are being used (2 hard drives and two DVD drives). Otherwise, I would try running an external eSata pannel to one of the intel controller connections (which worked great on my old system which did not have a jmicron controller).
My only conclusion is that the jmicron controller is the problem. I guess I’ll have to continue using the My Book drive with the USB connection until jmicron solves the problem and releases another driver.
As stated a few posts ago, I had finally suspected the problem was with overheating. I broke down and bought a replacement case with a built-in fan, removed the drive and installed it into the case. It has run for a couple of weeks doing long data-intensive backups from the internal drive to it, including multiple Virtual Machines, dual overnight defrags (those VM virtual drives don’t defrag easily) and the like. Now that I can actually monitor the drive temperature through SMART, it doesn’t break 30 degrees C while the internal drive runs at about 44.
The important part: It has not disappeared ONCE since I put it into the new enclosure.
The second advantage is that I an monitor the SMART status of the drive and possibly catch a failure before it becomes data-loss.
It may be my imagination, but it seems slightly faster too 
Conclusion:
Convection cooling provides inadequate cooling in the MyBook enclosure even when sitting raised on a “wire rack” from a muffin fan and the drive and/or controller is overheating when the drive is under load and goes into protective shut-down, requiring a re-boot to exit that state.
Unfortunately, we can’t gather simple empirical evidence, as the SMART data is not made available through the ESata interface.
It is entirely possible that the different controllers can cause different “duty cycles” on the drive (higher throughput on newer machines) and possibly different loading of the interface cabling (current source/sink) causing just enough of a temperature difference to make the drive go into thermal shut-down, explaining why some people move the drive to a different machine and have problems.
I never experimented with leaving the sides off, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of an enclosure.
PS: There is a spot on the internal MyBook chassis for a miniature fan. I didn’t look to see if there were connectors on the board as well such that you could purchase and install the mini fan (about a 1" fan), which could prove to be enough cooling to keep this working in the original case.
I’ve got a MyBook Studio Edition II 2 TB (running RAID 1) and a JMB363 SATA controller controlling the eSATA ports on my Biostar TPower i55 motherboard and am experiencing similar issues in Windows 7 Ultimate x64. My system is currently not configured to put drives to sleep yet, after a few minutes of idling, the MyBook will put itself to sleep. When I try to access the drive, it audibly spins up Windows Explorer waits. Eventually, it will let me access the drive, only to find that files or folders are missing. Upon inspecting the Event Viewer, I find this message:
Log Name: System
Source: Ntfs
Date: 11/12/2010 6:36:12 PM
Event ID: 55
Task Category: (2)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: mars
Description:
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume My Book.
So I follow its directions and run a chkdsk /f /x on it (f/ = fix errors; /x = force it to dismount), and it finds issues and fixes them, as shown here:
C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk /x /f f:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is My Book.
CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
487936 file records processed.
File verification completed.
191 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
525220 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is scanning unindexed files for reconnect to their original directory.
1 unindexed files scanned.
Recovering orphaned file cdisk (353945) into directory file 329529.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
487936 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
18643 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
12511472 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
976751968 KB total disk space.
308138140 KB in 227260 files.
73568 KB in 18644 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
596056 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
667944204 KB available on disk.
4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244187992 total allocation units on disk.
166986051 allocation units available on disk.
The drive is then accessible, and my files and folders all seem to be present and available. It works fine until it falls asleep again, then the cycle begins anew. As far as I can see, the issue only occurs when connected via eSATA. When connected via USB 2.0, the drive still falls asleep and wakes up, but no file system corruption occurs.
The corruption likely occurs because a USB drive is typically mounted as “removeable” and so typically has no write-caching enabled, however an e-Sata drive appears as an internal drive and isn’t expected to go to sleep by itself and for performance reasons has write caching turned on.
I’m surprised it doesn’t log a delayed write failure to the event log.
I tried turning write caching off awhile ago and that didn’t fix it. It’s still happening.
That Microsoft hotfix someone posted earlier didn’t help, either.
I can’t really use it this way, since it’s unacceptably unreliable on eSATA. Until Western Digital and JMicron get together and figure this out, I’m pretty much not getting what I paid for, and that **bleep**. USB and maybe FireWIre for now, I guess.
eSata is relativly new did your PC come with it or did you add it? Did you check see if there are any updates for your motherboard?
The eSATA ports and JMicron JMB363 controller are integrated into the motherboard I’m using, the Biostar TPower i55. The drivers on Biostar’s site aren’t even the latest, and they didn’t work correctly. I’ve tried a couple of different drivers from JMicron’s site, and the problem persists.
Did you look in the Device Manager at the eSata if it shows there right click open properties and see if there is power managenet tab there like in USB 2.0 also get into the advanced power settings and look around and see if there is an enable suspend checked in eSata. I don’t know much about eSata but sometines these helps with USB 2.0. Windows defaults aren’t always easy to find.
The best solution to keep your eSATA hard disk drive awake: NoSleepHD
Link: http://nosleephd.codeplex.com
NoSleepHD is a simple Windows program which writes an empty text file every few minutes to your external hard disk drive(s) to keep it from going into auto-sleep mode.
I have the WD My Book Home Edition 1.5TB (Model WD15000H1CS-00) with firmware version 1.034
I run on Windows 7 x64 with an eSATA JMicron JMB363 Controller on the ASUS P5K-E motherboard with the most recent BIOS firmware and JMicron driver.
I setup the program to WRITE EVERY 1 MINUTE. Then, I tested the program all night long. On the morning, the WD My Book drive was still working.
Note: The default time is set to 10 minutes. I highly recommend to change it to 1 minute and to select “Auto-Run at StartUp”. Also, the program runs in 64 bits mode on a Windows x64 system.
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