WD MyPassport Pro Wi-Fi: how add as network drive in Windows?

No. Do NOT enable SMB 1 server unless you have very old Windows instances that can’t do SMB 2 and are using it to connect to your PC files on a network. If everyone is running at least Windows 7, you have no need to enable SMB 1 as a server. A client? Yes. But a server opens you up for potential vulnerability.

Hi valerun. I’m struggling with this issue. Could you please detail exactly what you typed in the Windows Explorer? I tried \IP\Storage and other combinations and in all cases I get a “No access” error.

Are you using the WD device wifi or your own wifi for the connection?

Thanks in advance!

\YOUR DRIVE IP\Storage

Worked for me.

The MPW own wifi is a sealed system and cannot be part of any other network, You need to connect the MPW wifi to the home network/wifi, then you access the MPW through the home SSID and NOT the unique device wifi. SEE THE USER MANUAL. When I do this the MPW can be seen in Win FE under “Network” as any other device on home network.

Thanks! Yes, it finally worked for me, but I had to enable SMBv1 compatibility.

It works on both a Win 7 and 10 for me, and no SMB concerns.

The MPW Pro by default will connect just fine to Win7 and Win10 machines that were upgraded from Win7, but not on any clean, secure new Win10 machines.

The advice to enable SMB1 support on your Windows 10 machines, while technically works, is inconvenient. Instead if you are comfortable with Linux, you can pretty easily enable SMB2 support right on your MPW Pro and have it just work with any Win10 machine.

Here are the steps:

  1. In the MPW Pro Admin screen, toggle SSH access to “On” and set a root password

  2. Use an SSH client to log into your MPW Pro, user root, password is what you set above

  3. Run the following command to append a config line enabling SMB2:
    echo “max protocol = SMB2” >> /etc/samba/smb-global.conf

  4. Reboot and enjoy your MPW Pro connecting to Windows 10 machines without any special steps

I have tested this and it works on a 1TB MPW Pro SSD running firmware v1.04.17 and samba v3.6.25. These steps may not work on older firmwares if they are running versions of samba older than 3.6. Newer versions of samba have SMB2 enabled by default and do not need this special setting.

If any firmware updates break this, you may need to repeat these steps or otherwise find ways to modify the samba configuration. Honestly it would be great if WD firmware engineers can release an update with this enabled by default.

2 Likes

In my case, I cannot see it under wifi in network share under windows 7.
Is there anything to activate ?

Hey Vimp,

that’s exactly what I was looking for. Your hint works great. Had already my doubts, that I did a wrong choice with the WD Wireless Pro, but now I am fine. So, for all others out there, I can confirm, that changing the given line above in smb-global.conf leads to the fact, that you can use \192.168.60.1\Storage\ in the address line in Windows 10 again. And if you want you can map a network drive as usual (net use x: \192.168.60.1\Storage) …

Cheers

Hi there,
I have tried this on my new MyPassport Wireless Pro 4TB, but is says:

login as: root
root@192.168.1.206’s password:
[root@MyPassport ~]# max protocol =>> /etc/samba/smb-global.conf SMB2echo
-sh: max: command not found
[root@MyPassport ~]# login as: root

I have the same firmware as yours is… any idea, pls?

Do apologize, my mistake - using copy & paste is not always the best solution… :slight_smile:
I just have to restart later to see how it worked for me and will let you know - thanks anyways!

Back again - so I have tried, the command seems to have executed, but even after restart is still offers opening an web page interface in Explorer. So it did not work for me…
There is another option, paying $35 for a custom firmware with more features here: https://www.hackwifidrive.com/wd-wireless-pro

1 Like

Also, I have just found out - Total Commander can see and access MyPassport/Storage just fine and is more feature-rich then the default Windows file manager, so I won’t bother… :slight_smile:

My guess is that when you tried this you possibly could have appended -sh: max: command not found to the end of your smb-global.conf file and it probably breaks there so that anything you’ve added afterwards will not get seen. If you’re still having this issue, check this file /etc/samba/smb-global.conf and just make sure that there is not anything at the end of the file that shouldn’t be there, if there is remove it and if you still want to you can add max protocol = SMB2 which is what the following command from vimb was doing.

Maybe you can help me. I used your comment to connect my MPW a couple of months ago and it went well. Then today I had to replace the router/wifi. Everything converted over well with the new wifi name/pwd, but the MPW no longer appears on my PC Windows 7 where I need it. It does appear and connects to my Huawei P30 Pro just fine, but I can not for the life of me get it to appear on Windows 7 now. It was connected as MyPassport drive Z, now it does not show up in the Explorer under Network or anywhere. Dang.

Thanks! this info FINALLY gave me access to my MPWP (disk) on windows 10 1909

YES! Thank you… why can’t WD release a patch for this… it would be very simple for them to write a script for them to give to users. I did it via SSH because I know how to edit files in linux, but they really fu**ed up on this SMB2 issue. Their fix for it was to enable SMB1 in Windows 10… no thank you… I spent heaps on this drive.

It is not clear to me that WD is still supporting this product?

The current firmware is fully 2 years old. . . .and I know that other MyCloud products have been getting periodic (but rare) security updates to their firmware.

But that is besides the point… . . .the SMB problem is common to ALL the MyCloud products, including the NAS units. Most annoying for those of us that fall victim to periodic Windows10 updates on multiple machines.

Update to add: Huh. Looks like the MPW pro units are still sold in both HDD and SSD flavors. I thought they were off the market. I really like my units (I have a MPW and MPW Pro HDD); but at this point I would not recommend because of the non-existent firmware support. The SSD version intrigues me; but it is physically HUGE for what it is. . . . and the lack of firmware support. . . .

1 Like

So after messing around a bit, and still not having much luck I finally realised that Windows 10 uses SMB3, (not SMB 2) so I changed max protocol = SMB3 and bang! all of a sudden we’re in action and it’s working perfectly fine in Windows 10. Finally!

Oh I might have been too quick to announce success. Turns out I forgot to restart my windows machine after disabling SMB1. Even with min protocol = SMB2 in both smb.conf and smb-global.conf and a restart, I still have windows 10 reporting that the MPWP requires SMB1. I guess I need to update the samba binaries? Anyone know how to make SMB3 available on the MPWP?