WD My Book Essential is not recognized by windows since yesterday. It was workin

[mahakavi]

Till yesterday my WD My Book Essentials hard drive was working fine. Today it suddenly quit not being recognized by my Windows 7 OS. The Microsoft dialog box opens up "Format your drive before you can use it". Naturally all data will be lost if I do that. On the device manager it is recognized but not by windows. When I get details for the driver it says "the device is working properly". It is very confusing.

 

[BigBoo]

I am currently having the same problem. I have looked and tried every solution on the web i could find nothing works. I plugged my WD external into my laptop the other day and it did not recognize it as My Passport like it usually does, it recognized it as Local Disk G:. When ever I try to click on the "Local disk G:" my windows explorer crashes. This also happens when I right click. I have had the "Format your drive before you can use it" popup so giving up I said hell I'll just format it. When I do it stops and says "Windows Was unable to complete the format". I'm starting to get really aggravated at this problem and would love for a solution so BUMP!

 

[mahakavi]

I am currently having the same problem. I have looked and tried every solution on the web i could find nothing works. I plugged my WD external into my laptop the other day and it did not recognize it as My Passport like it usually does, it recognized it as Local Disk G:. When ever I try to click on the "Local disk G:" my windows explorer crashes. This also happens when I right click. I have had the "Format your drive before you can use it" popup so giving up I said hell I'll just format it. When I do it stops and says "Windows Was unable to complete the format". I'm starting to get really aggravated at this problem and would love for a solution so BUMP!

Misery loves company--right? Remember it is said that TV, and internet are both a blessing and a curse. Now add computers and its peripherals to that list.

To add to my misery I did a disk management and it spotted the drive but said the free space is the same as the original memory. So it appears my external hard disk crashed. I didn't do anything like adding new material to it lately. Suddenly it went kaput. I am not sure if techies can recover any data from it (all 150 GB of music, documents etc.)

 

[Jackson147]

How does it show in “Disk Management”?

Your situation happens sometimes. You could try to assign a new letter to this drive in “Disk Management” like this:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc757491%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

If it doesn’t work, you perhaps have no choice but to format it for the future use.
However, in order to rescue all your data there, you could try a free hard drive recovery tool that has ever completely restored the inaccessible data of my friend back from a mistakenly formatted drive. That ‘s why I recommend it to you.
You could give it a shot here: http://freeware-fix.blogspot.com/2013/02/external-drive-not-detected.html

Important note: You should not save new file on this “not formatted ” hard drive in case of data loss.
You should format this drive before you have surely restored all your data back.
In case of data loss, your best bet is to keep everything important backed up on at least two different drives.
Hope this works for you.

 

[mahakavi]

How does it show in “Disk Management”?

Your situation happens sometimes. You could try to assign a new letter to this drive in “Disk Management” like this:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc757491%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

If it doesn’t work, you perhaps have no choice but to format it for the future use.
However, in order to rescue all your data there, you could try a free hard drive recovery tool that has ever completely restored the inaccessible data of my friend back from a mistakenly formatted drive. That ‘s why I recommend it to you.
You could give it a shot here: http://freeware-fix.blogspot.com/2013/02/external-drive-not-detected.html

Important note: You should not save new file on this “not formatted ” hard drive in case of data loss.
You should format this drive before you have surely restored all your data back.
In case of data loss, your best bet is to keep everything important backed up on at least two different drives.
Hope this works for you.

Well, this drive is playing tricks on me. It looks like a heat-related phenomenon. When it quit with messages like "the drive needs to be formatted before use" I went to the disk management and it showed the disk drive there. But in the windows explorer it didn't. I unplugged the drive and left it overnight. This morning I re-plugged it and it came to life showing all the folders. I transferred a few folders into another portable drive and it worked fine for a while. Then it quit again. Gets tired, it seems, after working for a while! Unplugged it again, waited an hour, re-plugged it and sure enough it came back to life. Same story repeats again. Quits after a while--this time it could not find certain files I was trying to copy. So that particular folder transfer was half-complete. Apparently those files got corrupt (I don't know why). I will give it another overnight rest and do more transfer tomorrow. Hope to recover most of the files this way. One thing is for sure. All the folders/files are there except some are corrupt. When it quits the drive shows "empty". When it gets working again it shows all the folders. I guess I have to keep it unplugged except when I want to save or retrieve files. Will keep you posted on developments.

When it quits and I check disk management it shows total capacity and free space to be the same. When it works it shows 180 GB data and 118 GB free space. This drive deserves to be a museum piece!

 

[mahakavi]

After all, I was able to get many of the files from the "uncooperative" external HDD. It behaves well when it is "cold". When it gets warmed up or when it encounters a zip file to transfer it goes berserk and quits. I can unplug it and later coax it to cough up more data. So it looks like I will keep "her" and not junk or reformat.

Thanks to all those who pitched in to help.

 

[mahakavi]

Here is my final take on this matter.
It is a question of thermal fatigue. Once the drive is plugged in for quite some time it appears there is a metallic contact which gets disconnected similar to wht happens to the starter motor in an automobile. When the contact gets disconnected the computer cannot recogize the drive and the message will appear "format your drive before you can use it" and even when device manager shows its presence the message will be "the folder is empty". Unplug the drive from the power connection and let it cool. It will come back to life. That is the nature of the beast and we have to learn to live with it. I don't think the portable drives get into this situation since they get their power from the computer itself at low voltage.

 

[mahakavi]

I solved my own problem. Pl see above for my comments. I want this thread closed.

 

[stvfcy]

This is not the solution... there is an issue with the Windows OS. I am running Ubuntu 12.10 and I have no issue with the MY Passport Essential. I can view, copy, execute files without an issue. When I reboot my laptop to Windows 7 I have all the same issues that everyone else here is having where Windows explorer will hang until I kill the process.

Windows automatic update must have applied a fix pack that has broken the linkage. My solution is to install Ubuntu on your laptop in dual boot mode. When you want to access the files on the Passport you boot to Linux and when not you can boot to Windows. The install for Ubuntu will set this all up for you so no technie knowledge is needed.

To get it to work

 

[Lauri Elias]

For me, the easiest answer was to pull the power cord and plug it back it. Not the USB connection, the power.

Also, I can confirm stvfcy's solution, installing Ubuntu 14.04 on a virtual box and accessing the drive from there also worked like a charm.