This is for what ever it’s worth–
I spent several frustrating hours with an extremely slow transfer rate problem. Did all the three tests that are built into the diagnostics-- all passed, went to the WD website and downloaded all the links and instructions that seemed to apply. Did the WinDLG diagnostic program suggested by Customer Support-- it passed. I must have about 20 or 30 pages of printed instruction downloads, link to link… nothing worked. The transfer would take not hours, but days, to creep along. Finally, I decided to start from scratch-- I erased the complete Book, deleted all downloaded files from WD and started over. Unfortunately, I kept poor track of the exact sequence and had to reinstall or redue some of the prompts. It didn’t go smoothly, but somehow I stumbled through to the end and got the stuff installed.
Finally-- everything works fine. Transfer is fast— it might have been maybe a half-hour or an hour when I came back to check progress and it was all done!!! Wow, it worked, and all the files are there.
One of the downloads in this successful process was from WD: Firmwareupdater.exe 3.3Mb, also WD Smartware upgrader (34,129kb/37,556 Kb) dated 9/19/2012. This was done on a PC having Windows 7-64 bit, and the WD product involved was WD My Book 930 GB, 1110USB, product ID 1110, having firmware revision 2.018.
In the end, it transferred 387,067 files or 25.64 Gb in a very fast time (maybe a half hour-- I didn’t keep accurate time).
So-- hours of frustration-- but finally the WD Book Essential performed flawlessly. My only regret is not keeping good track of what I did in detail so that I could effortlessly repeat the process if I ever had to do it again-- and also help others with this same slow-transfer problem.
