I have previously noted that I like the Western Digital My Book line of external hard drives (particularly for their design cues). However, since Leopard I have had some problems with my drive, in particular it would randomly unmount causing my SuperDuper! based automatic backup schedule to fail. Since I suspect some of our readers might suffer similar problems I thought it worth pointing out that Western Digital has finally released some updates. I've been testing them for a couple of weeks now and things seem to finally be working as advertised.First there is a firmware update for the drive itself (be sure to pick your actual model) which is necessary for using the drive with Leopard. Second, there is also a Mac WD Drive Manager menubar application which is supposedly necessary for light and button functionality. In fact, the light "fuel gauge" on my drive still doesn't work properly, but since doing the firmware update and installing the drive manager I have not had the drive randomly unmount. So if you have been having problems running a My Book drive with Leopard I highly suggest applying the firmware update and running the Drive Manager to see if it helps.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
5-12-2008 @ 7:13PM
thillsman said...
Someone has a lot of unread messages. :)
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5-12-2008 @ 7:18PM
Fernando said...
omg 6362 unread mail?!
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5-12-2008 @ 7:20PM
james welch said...
i can only find the firmware update for the home edition mybook, i have a 1TB essential, will this work?
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5-12-2008 @ 7:25PM
Jon Buys said...
That's strange, I haven't had any issues at all with my MyBook since upgrading to the Leopard.
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5-12-2008 @ 7:35PM
Rhywun said...
Me neither. I've never installed the software that comes with a hard drive, and they've always worked fine. I have a MyBook with the vertical lights, and an older one - I think it's a MyBook - with the circular lights. Both sets of lights flash when there's activity, but I don't really pay attention to them or particularly care if they reflect anything "meaningful". Maybe they do already - maybe not :)
5-12-2008 @ 7:29PM
Darren said...
I see someone subscribes to a lot of pointless mailing lists.
Dude, seriously. Select all, mark as read. It's not that hard.
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5-12-2008 @ 7:43PM
[In:TkZ] said...
I bought a new WD MyBook about a couple of weeks ago. It crashed on the first day. After a few randomly unmount, it didn't mount at all. I found on WD support site about that Leopard compatibility update too - but too late, I had to wait a week for the new drive. So I recommend updating it
That was the fastest use of warranty for me... lol
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5-12-2008 @ 8:03PM
OSXleopard2 said...
So what is that nifty gmail app sitting in your menubar? I'd like to get ahold of it...
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5-12-2008 @ 8:08PM
[Quine] said...
gmail notifier by google: http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_mac.html
5-12-2008 @ 8:06PM
[Quine] said...
I didn't install the software for either of my WD MyBooks, reformatted to HFS+ Journaled the day I got them, and both the lights and auto shutoff work great.
Proprietary software for managing an external hard disk is stupid. It's just generic magnetic media inside a case, it doesn't need anything special.
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5-13-2008 @ 8:01AM
Victor Agreda Jr said...
Agreed! All these add-ons smack of the kind of bloatware Windows is famous for. I'll eschew geegaws like a "fuel guage" for my HD if manufacturers will simply make sure their hardware works. If they wanna get frisky, why not drop a little money on the iSlayer guys and get a custom dashboard widget?
Otherwise I find it humorous that hardware makers are bothering with this waste of time. Why not include an IRQ simulator or SCSI selector widget so we can pretend we're truly back in the dark ages?
Now I have to go power down my machine to swap out one of my 5 ADB devices, BRB...
5-12-2008 @ 8:58PM
nick said...
Ya, I also don't see a firmware update for the essential edition... I do see it for the Home Edition.
I'm thinking about downloading this Drive Manager.... I have had issues were my drive wont mount on a restart or start up. I can get it to mount if I change usb ports. And it does show up in Disc Utility... but not named what I named it... And Utility cant do anything to it... I try to erase, zero out... Nothing.
This might help....
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5-12-2008 @ 9:48PM
James said...
I got one of these drives to use on my windows machine via eSATA. It kept unmounting during the backup but I found a solution... uninstall the WD software and install a decent backup program. The capacity gauge doesn't work via eSATA and it won't auto turn off with the PC. WD drives are pretty reliable though.
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5-12-2008 @ 10:00PM
Able-X said...
Funny, my 1TB MyBook is one of few external drives I've had work reliably since Leopard. OF course, the trend i've noticed is that Firewire drives work without issue, but all my USB drives that worked great in Tiger randomly unmount themselves. Would love to find out what Apple did in Leopard that causes that, cause I had literally twice as many USB drives hooked up under Tiger with far less issues.
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5-13-2008 @ 12:52PM
anson said...
Ditto, I have not had any issues with a My Book Premium (500GB, round light) and My Book Home (1TB, thin light) connected via FireWire. I did update the firmware on the older Premium as suggested by WD to avoid a FW id problem but the Premium is out of the box.
5-12-2008 @ 10:14PM
magic95vert said...
Not there for my model of MyBook Premium FW/USB2.0
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5-12-2008 @ 10:51PM
virusdoc said...
These firmware and Manager updates did not solve repeated unmounting problems for me with my MyBook Home attached by firewire. I installed them 2 weeks ago and the problems persisted; I eventually gave up on the drive and attached a home-made firewire drive, which is quite reliable.
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5-12-2008 @ 11:08PM
Tom said...
No leopard update for my My Book Pro/Premium II Firmware Update - Mac :-( Anyone have the 1TB Firewire drive? I'm having constant issues with it remounting as a different volume number (Drive 1, Drive 2, Drive 3, etc) each time. Would appreciate any insights from other WD owners.
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5-13-2008 @ 4:59AM
Rachel said...
I bought a 1TB studio edition. It worked fine as a firewire drive after installing the above update (which actually came out several months ago, shortly after Leopard, IIRC), but had a nasty habit of spontaneously shutting down when used as an eSATA drive to my Linux box. It doesn't just pass the SATA/SCSI commands through, it has a whole firmware emulation layer which tries to protect the host from behaviour like going into standby but doesn't work properly.
As the main use to which I was putting it was my EyeTV Archive, in the end I took the drive itself out and put it in my iMac. And wasn't *that* an adventure!
Sadly the remaining enclosure doesn't seem to recognise other drives (even WD ones, such as the one that came out of my iMac).
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5-13-2008 @ 6:22AM
Denmaru said...
Indeed - no update for the Premium version. WTF? Seriously, I hope they release the update within the next days..
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