My MyBook World Edition White Light has worked fine, attached via my webmodem to my Mac Lion computer, for a year. When I added a second NAS drive from another company to the setup last week, the MyBook went all wonky. PCs using my modem could only occasionally see the MyBook, and it dropped on and off the Mac’s list of connected servers at random intervals during the day.
On the advice of my ISP I attached an Ethernet switch to the DSL modem, and attached both NAS drives to it. This resolved connectivity to both drives – with one exception. When the Mac goes to sleep at night, there’s a 50/50 chance it loses connectivity to the MyBook. Logging in through Connect to Server does not work; going through the web interface to the MyBook admin page does not work. The MyBook must be physically restarted for the Mac to reacquire it.
What do I need to do? As I understand it, the webmodem assigns its own IP address to the devices on the switch’s port – and both the WD and the new NAS drive are at that address. How do I keep the MyBook from dropping off the system?
This is not a WD problem but an Mountain Lion problem. There are many posts on the Apple forum regarding this. It seems when the Mac goes to sleep it disconnects the drives including some drives connected to both NAS and USB. I don’t know if a fix is being worked on or not. I have the same problem with my MYBookWorld Second Edition. When I mount the volume Public/Download it disconnects on sleep. Also Time Machine will not function unless the iMac is not sleeping. This is a huge bug.
I have come to the same conclusion in my research (though I am on Lion, not Mountain Lion). Even extending the lease time for the IP address in the modem’s interface did no good.
However, the other problem remains and does seem to be a WD problem: Once this loss of contact happens, the Mac cannot reopen the WD drive through any method. The drive must be restarted. This has not been the case with the Seagate.
I think I have the same problem on Lion as well. I first noticed it about a month ago when Time Machine kept failing to run (backup disk could not be found) and then I’d see the MyBookWorld and MyBookWorld-Backup in the browser sidebar under SHARED but when I click on them they disappear. Does anyone have that same problem?
Doing some more research on the Apple forums, it looks like both Lion – and to a greater extent, Mountain Lion – simply hate NAS drives when it comes to sleeping the system. It doesn’t matter if you have a static IP or not.
There are dozens of people complaining over there, and it doesn’t appear that a fix has been made. Mountain Lion has actually made the problem worse, some say. So it is a matter of waiting for Apple to do something (yawn).
OK, no, I don’t want to wait for that. I keep thinking the solution is somewhere in these points:
My WD MyBook did not have this problem at all with Lion – until I added a second NAS drive (the Seagate) to the web router. At that point, the MyBook became unreachable at all – until I added a Netgear switch between the modem and the NAS drive, as suggested by my ISP. Now both drives are reachable – but the Seagate recovers from the lost connection when the Mac sleeps and remounts. The MyBook does not remount, even having a static IP. It vanishes from the network, and cannot be found by any means. It must be restarted by hand every time.
So if the MyBook was playing nice with Lion before, what is it about adding a second NAS drive that changed its behavior? Right now it’s looking to me that if I want two NAS drives (and I do) I am better off having two Seagate drives, as the one I have is somehow remounting automatically when the Mac wakes up.
