My Book Live won't reconnect... help please!

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Prior to today, I’ve had no issues with my network hard drive for over 6 months… now today, lots of issues!

I have a 3TB MyBook Live, and a Mac OS 10.6.8

First, a few hours ago, I got a weird message saying unable to write to the hard drive… then it disappeared, and I WAS able to write to it just a moment later, so I thought it was a fluke.  Then, my dashboard kept vanishing (never done that before), and I couldn’t access the drive for short periods, usually 30 seconds to 1 minute… then the drive would reappear.  It also kept disconnecting, I had to “connect” numerous times. But it kept doing it, it did the disappear/reappear thing at least 6-7 times, I got worried & thought maybe it should be rebooted cuz I couldn’t find anything similar in searches, so I shut down the hard drive and cycled it by disconnecting everything, waiting then reconnecting…(guess that was not the right thing to do though)… now I cannot connect to it at all.  I have rebooted my computer repeatedly, my router, my modem, my hard drive again… nothing.  When I click the icon for the dashboard, I only get “About WD Quick View”, nothing else.  I cannot seem to connect to the drive at all anymore!!  When I type in “mybooklive.local”, it searches for a minute, then it says it cannot find it.

The light on the front of the HD is green.  But also, on the back, the “bottom” light next to the ethernet port is also green, but the troubleshooting says it should be amber to mean it’s connected to the network…??  Even during a reboot cycle, it is either off or green, never amber.  Other than that, everything appears to be fine… so why can’t I connect anymore??

Also, the last time the dashboard was connected, I looked at the stats… it showed the drive was “ok”, the temp was “ok”, etc… everything looked fine… but it kept vanishing.  I haven’t had any other issues with connecting or the internet, just the drive.  Numerous wireless devices are all still working great, except the hard drive.

I am really worried about my data!!  Any help is very, very, very highly appreciated!!!  Thanks in advance!!

2

Try resetting the drive

try connecting directly to the computer 

3

Have you tried what Wizer said?

By pressing the reset button for 4 seconds the unit’s password and network settings will be set back to default. Your data will not be touched.

If you plug a network cable directly from your Mac into the MBL, and reboot them both, they should come up on the same network. This is the most direct way, and will eleminate other things that could be causing the problem.

4

Sorry, I forgot to mention in my original post, yes I DID try the reset button… still no changes.

As for connecting it directly… I’d like to get clarification on that if I’m not doing it correctly.  On my macbook pro, I have one jack that will accept a cat5 cable… so I went ahead and connected the cable there from the hard drive.  Unlike my old wired WD drive, this one does not have a USB connection, so I’m not sure how else to connect it.  But using the cat5 network cable connected to my computer in that one outlet, I still get nothing, I still can’t “see” my hard drive.

I’m still very worried.  If that’s the correct way to connect it directly, and still nothing, then I’m even more worried!

Also, connected directly to my computer, I still only get a green light on the back, not amber as it’s supposed to be.  I even tried a different cat5 cable in case the first went bad… still green light, and no drive visible.

I also wrote to WD support one week ago, and have yet to get a response, other than the automated one saying they would respond in 1 business day… so far a week and nothing!

Any other ideas??  Or clarification if I’m not connecting directly correct?  As I said, my old hard drive connected via USB, easy… this one only has the power cord and the cat5 cable, which before now I’ve never tried to connect.  So this is really freaking me out.  

Thanks so much!!

5

Same Issue here.  I have rebooted in many different ways as well as checked voltage at wall outlet to guarantee clean power.  The device is not recognizeable even when directly connected and both devices have been rebooted.  I have a green light on the front of the MBL and both lights on the ethernet light up, bottom one is green and top is amber.  I have tried reinstalling the software on the computer and it cannot be found during discovery.  Is the drive toast?

6

I finally got a response from WD support… they determined my drive was defective, and since it was only 6 months old, they replaced it.  The sad thing is, I mistakenly had a few items on there that cannot be replaced.  They said I could use a data recovery company… but I learned those cost like $400-1000!  Not worth it for my few items that are irreplaceable!  They also ‘approve’ Best Buy for data recovery… DON’T GO THERE!!  The idiots have NO clue what they are doing!  They offered me data recovery at a much better price, in fact 3 different agents all offered the same thing at different times, all promising to recover my data from my defective drive… turns out, they were only offering & charging me for data “backup”, with the drive CONNECTED, which they weren’t able to do!  DUH, I already told them it wouldn’t connect, so that wouldn’t work!  So I wasted lots of time, gas back & forth to the store, etc, because the Geek Squad idiots don’t understand the difference between backup and recovery, they don’t understand when a drive is defective, it needs FULL data recovery… which is what THREE different agents promised me, but failed to deliver!!  And even though I think they should take responsibility and do the recovery at the price I was promised, they said no, not gonna happen!  So I will be recommending to WD that they drop Best Buy GS from the list of approved companies, because they are all morons who don’t know what they are doing, and make promises they can’t keep!!

Anyway, Tyler if your drive is still in the 3 year warranty, get it replaced… and hopefully everything has a copy somewhere else so you won’t lose it like I did.  Of course, I’m also disappointed in WD in that they offer RE-certified drives as replacement… sad I pay for a brand new drive, it fails in 6 months, and they send me a USED drive to make up for it, SAD!!  (Oh and the first replacement they sent me was DEAD on arrival, had to send it back immediately for another replacement… how scary is that!)  Hope this used one I got lasts awhile this time.  At least I learned my lesson on duplicating everything!

7

This MyBookLive 3TB has been SUCH a pain in the **bleep**! I am getting the same message and think that I will have to replace mine too - for the third or fourth time.  I don’t know why I keep getting crappy drives.  The last few worked fine until a firmware update slowed them to a crawl (max 7 MB/s), average 500 kbs).  This drive worked okay for about an hour (total) but then it disappeared like the OP’s drive did.  The only difference is that my light is blue or amber rather than green.  

The drive does not register even in my router’s device list showing all IP addresses (i.e. I used the router’s admin utility through its IP), and it doesn’t show when I pull up the same list on my MacBook Pro’s utility while the drive is plugged directly in.  The issue persists even after switching CAT5/6 cables that worked on other devices - lame!  On major oddity in this whole mix is that the indicator light on my router lights up when I plug in the drive, showing the router detects something without being able to assign it an IP address.  All other signs point to drive failure.  If it hasn’t failed completely, I do not have enough networking expertise to force-fix the drive.