MyBook Studio pausing on Mac intermittently

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I have been perusing the forums but haven’t run across anything like the problem I am having so here goes …

I have a MyBook Studio hooked up to an iMac via Firewire 800.  The drive seems to work fine except that at unexpected times the light on the front of the drive starts blinking and the Mac pinwheel comes on in the application I am using.  At this point, the application appears to be waiting for the disk to finish whatever it’s doing before it returns control to the application. The funny thing is, it is not usually associated with a high level of disk IO.  It seems to be completely random.  I have seen it when using Final Cut and Pro Tools. The firmware version is 1.004 and the WD Smartware version is 1.1.1.4.  I do not use this disk for Time Machine, in fact, I have turned Time Machine off.  I also have not used any of the smartware features/software.  I didn’t see much in the Smartware stuff that I could turn off. 

Somebody help please …  it’s really getting aggravating.  

2

Try this:

  1. Unmount the WD MyBook drive.

  2. Unplug both the FW800 and power from the WD MyBook drive.

  3. Restart the computer.

  4. Re-plug the WD MyBook drive to your Mac.

thanarath

3

Just an FYI: I was using my MyBook as my iTunes library when this started happening to me. about 3 days later - my drive died completely.

I have no idea what caused it - i was under warranty so I have sent in for a replacement.

You may want to back up any files you might have on there though - I wish I had when my drive started acting strangely.

Good luck.

4

Well, here’s what it was …

That virtual CD thing that you cannot turn off because WD doesn’t have a firmware that allows it, mounts every time you mount the drive.  The problem is that when you send enough IO down the firewire connection, the Mac OS loses its connection to that virtual CD. When it does, it begins trying to recover that mount.  Because it is emulating a CD on the same firewire connection as the disk, all IO is interrupted until that CD is remounted.  Simply ejecting the virtual CD solves the problem.  WD, please make a version of the firmware that you can turn off the virtual CD. Also, inform your support staff (which I think is conveniently located in India and speaks really bad english) of this issue.  When I can solve it as a last resort because an hour support call results in nothing, that’s a problem.