WD My book no longer recognized

Hi all,

Recently my computer stopped recognizing my Wester Digital essential mybook external usb hard drive. It used to be drive G on my system, now it's no longer there on "my computer" and it does not show under disk management either.

It is spinning and the green light is on.

I did get a pop up on the task bar saying:

"One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned
and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem click this message."

It takes me to a place, "USB Root Hub" which extended lists 8 ports, one (in bold) says Unknown Device. I think it's an offshoot of the device manager.

It's recommendation is reconnect (which I've done on several ports and w/ a different cable) failing that replace the device (which I'd rather not do).

I thought maybe it was a driver thing, but there is no xp driver on the WD tech support site, nor on the files I initally coppied from the drive before I reformatted it.

If anyone has any ideas I would appreciate any feedback...Thanks in advance,
Ethan

 

hey.
if it is a driver problem you can try uninstalling ALL the USB devices in device manager, then select scan for new devices and they will be installed again (no drivers necessary)
apart from it being a hardware failure, this is prob your best bet.
you can always pulll the HDD out of the case and try it in a different one...

 

My wife just had the same prob. We shut her PC down and then back on, solved her problem. Try that first.

 

Thanks for the tips guys, no luck,however, after scaning loads of message boards and reviews (bad) for the product, I came across one that suggested unplugging the drive from the power strip and plugging it directly into the socket. Lo and behold...it worked. I see a lot of people run into this w/ WD mybooks so I hope this can be of help.

 

Hi

i am also having this exact problem as above, all worked fine when running it on XP.
I have since got a new laptop which has Vista, my external drive worked at first but now have the above problem.

Any ideas?

Buzz