WD My Book 2 TB Turning Off

Portable Drives My Passport
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There are many posts on this forum discussing this issue, or issues similar to it. I am unbelievably disappointed with WD’s response to these queries, and wanted to document my problem so that others can also express their disappointment.

I had my hard drive for about a year without issue. Only recently has the hard drive begun to turn itself off for reasons unknown. I am able to temporarily fix this by unplugging the power adapter from the back of the drive, and simply reconnecting it. The drive powers up normally, and I am able to access the drive and the files on it without issue. The drive literally shuts itself off - it is not recognized by my PC because it is not powered. It will not appear in the “disk management” window because the machine cannot recognized a disk that is not powered. I want to prevent the drive from “sleeping” or turning itself off, or whatever the underlying reason.

I have read numerous posts that discuss similar problems. The only information I have been able to take away from this forum is that my power adapter may be malfunctioning or that the USB cord is “crimped”. That is simply an insufficient answer and is no way a fix to this problem. It appears literally hundreds of other users are experiencing similar symptoms - this means that either a) there is a driver problem and the firmware of the drive needs to be updated and / or b) the drives and its parts (power adapter, USB cable, etc) are faulty and need to be replaced or recalled. Either way, WD must show some responsibility and actually address this issue. If there is an issue with the power adapter, send me a new power adapter. If there is an issue with the USB cable, send me a new USB cable; but enough of this bush-league troubleshooting - I want to her from WD representatives. They have surely received enough complaints about this.

Please respond with any helpful tips that have worked for others.

1 Like
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I’m with you.

I use my WD MyBook 2TB in RAID1 form, connecting to my Mac by FireWire. I use it store and work with my photographic libraries.

I get no warning. The drive just powers down and unmounts itself. I can find no reason for this. It doesn’t appear to be overheating, the menu bar widget shows the temperature and disk appears to be okay.

This is very frustrating. It makes the company tag line of “put your life on it” ring a little hollow. How can I trust anything that just spontaneously shuts itself down?

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  • I am with you too

This problem is so annoying, I sympathize with your frustration.

My WD My Book Essential 2TB does not appear on boot up. 

I have updated the firmware and Windows Drivers as per the support documentation. 

As you stated, the only way to get the HDD to mount is to pull out the power cable from the rear of the unit and insert it back in. The computer instantly recognises it and away we go. However, I have been doing this for the past 6 months and I’ve had enough. 

  1. Is WD Support going to update the firmware / drivers if this is a software problem?

  2. Is WD Support going to supply new cables (USB 3.0) or PSU for this unit if is a hardware fault?

  3. Is WD Support going to recall this faulty unit if it cannot locate a solution to this problem and compensate users with a product that does work. 

  4. Is WD Support going to do anything? Non - responsiveness, non - performance and non - compliance with consumer law is not good enough. 

It is time WD Support took action on this long standing issue!!

Regards

Spymez