My Passport Wireless Pro does not show up as a 'Network Share' storage in Windows 10? Here's the solution

WD External Drives My Passport Wireless
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I was troubleshooting why the My Passport Wireless Pro drive does not show up as a Network share on Windows 10, while it does on Windows 8 and older OS?

I came across a possible reason, which is that the SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support is disabled in Windows 10 by default now. This is to prevent the likes of WannaCry ransomware attack, which spread on the network through the old SMB v1 protocol.
So, be careful, you might be at risk.
If you still want to enable the WD My Passport Wireless Pro file system access through WiFi on Windows 10, you’ll have to enable the SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support through ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ option. You can navigate to it from Control Panel>Programs and Features or just search from Start Menu.

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Restart the computer after enabling it. Connect to your Wireless Pro’s WiFi network, then you’ll see your Wireless Pro as a network share.

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1 Like
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Hi Tech-Freak

Thank You for your valuable response and providing this troubleshooting steps. It will definitely help other users in resolving such issues.

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The essential setup of @Tech-Freak is missing in the WD Manuals.
Sorry @Peter.g

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this is just a temporary solution, microsoft is intent to get ride of old samba protocol,

the correct solution is WD get the samba update,
as they use an pretty old version 3.6.25 released at 2015-02-23 inside the Wireless Pro

5

Got same issue on Windows 7.
Is there a way to check windows 7 smb ?

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Here is a better sollution than to enable a protocol destined to die.

Samba 3.6.x actually supports SMB v2 it’s just not enabled by default.

So enable SSH and login to your drive. Then you can vi /etc/samba/smb.conf and add before the include lines:

min protocol = SMB2
max protocol = SMB3

I’m pretty sure the second line is useless as SMB3 is not supported but for me after restarting samba

/etc/init.d/S75smb restart

it started working ! I can now access my drive in Windows 10 without enabling SMB1.

I have yet to test if it survives rebooting the drive - it might be that smb.conf is regenerated on each reboot - then it might be that we need to add to smb-global.conf or find where the file is reset.

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Thanks for your message. It was helpful. Still, I dont understand why it doesnt work.
I can use properly on my Mac but on my Windows I only have a shortcut link to the website.
How can I make it appear as a hard drive? Thanks to anyone who can help me. Take care.

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You would map it as a network drive.

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Which user has to be used? admin or root user?

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I think root. . .playing as we speak

Edit: OK. . .I ssh’d into the device. . .tried adding those lines. NOPE. didn’t work.

With

min protocol = SMB2
max protocol = SMB3

I lost that ability to explore files on the device. Until I took them back out.

Inaddition;

/etc/init.d/S75smb restart

didn’t work.