While hard drives can fail at times for odd reasons, in this instance it turned out to be a problem with the drive's enclosure.Īpparently the power button on the MyBook enclosure can get stuck, and since holding the power button on many devices is a way to reset them or otherwise send custom commands to the firmware, this could cause the MyBook to power up but then stop communicating properly with the computer. This problem started happening after the system had been using the drive successfully for a while, and had performed numerous Time Machine backups to it. The drive would appear to start mounting or otherwise be recognized by the system, but then seem to hang and not be recognized. Recently we received an e-mail from a MacFixIt reader who wrote in with a fix he found for his Western Digital MyBook external hard drive that had stopped working. Problems can arise when your hardware device is too old or not supported any longer.In reality we do not recommend you 'smack' your hard drive or other system components, but sometimes a little love tap or two can fix odd problems. This will help if you installed an incorrect or mismatched driver. Try to set a system restore point before installing a device driver. It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available. Otherwise, check with our website as often as possible so that you don’t miss the release that can improve your HDD. That being said, make sure this Toolbox version has a new firmware version available for your solid state drive and, if so, hit the download button, and install the software. Once the installation is complete, run the Toolbox and follow the instructions for updating the HDD. When it comes to installing this software, the steps are very easy because all you have to do is get the downloadable package (extract it if necessary) and run the available setup. Once you have updated your drive, reboot to make sure that all modifications take effect. However, before you consider downloading this version, carefully read the release notes for changes that can apply to your HDD. It also displays various pieces of information regarding the connected storage devices and searches for a new suitable firmware version. The Hard Disk Drive (HDD) firmware updater is an update utility that properly recognizes the HDD unit(s) installed on your system. This firmware version includes support for Mac OS-X Tiger. Fixed issue of drive dropping off of the list after system wakes up from standby mode

Wd my book essential troubleshooting