MyBook Live on High Sierra - can browse via Finder, but can't connect via Time Machine

Apologies for the rather long-winded subject, but I didn’t really know how to shorten it. The problem is thus:

I have a 2016 MBP that’s misbehaving and I want to back up and reinstall High Sierra. My problem is slightly odd in that I can see the drive in Finder, and can browse it but, if I attempt to connect it to Time Machine in Prefs, I get:

There was a problem connecting to the server ‘mybooklive’. The server may not exist, or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.

So, the question is: how come I can browse it, if my Mac can’t connect to it…? I receive the same error if I attempt to connect via ‘Go’ → ‘Connect to server’.

Any ideas…? There are 3 accounts on the computer and the error is consistent across all three.

Hi AtheneNoctua,

Maybe you should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this.

To Contact WD for Technical Support
https://support.wdc.com/support/case.aspx?lang=en

The link below will allow you to call support.