Top 10 Western Digital My Book Essential Edition (WDG1U5000N) 500 GB Hard Drive Questions & Answers

I had the same problem some have posted about. I had a lot of data on my drive and then one day it didn't show up in "My Computer" anymore. I had to assign a separate drive letter to the external drive.

Plug in the drive.
Right click on "My Computer"
Click on "Manage
Click on "Disk Management"
On the bottom half of the right side you should find "My Book" assigned to a disk number.
Right click on "My Book"
Click "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
Click Change
Select a new drive letter and hit OK

Hope this helps some people out.

I HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM! or at least this works for my my book 1tb external hard drive. when i initially connect it i get the 'new device detected' pop up thing, but then it doesn't show on my computer. However, I have found that keeping the device pllugged into the computer but removing then replacing the power source from the device causes it to show up. That's all I did, unplug the power cord on the back and replace it. The computer says 'new hardware detected' and 'found my book mass storage device,' then it appears on my my computer tab. Hope this works with you as well!

THIS WORKS....Here try this...unplug everything including the power cable...press and hold the button on the unit for 10 seconds. after that hook the unit back in the power cord first..and it should work...files and everythin are there...I got this from tech support and it worked for me

I had a similar problem that I just fixed. The drive was not being recognized at all - I unplugged, rebooted, switched to different computer, used different usb cable, plugged into wall outlet, NADA!

Then I tried something else - I just bought 2 more external hard drives and I switched the power port from the new one to the old one and the hard drive was recognized. I plugged the old outlet into the new hard drive and that worked, too. PHEW!

I had almost 100Gbs of music on there!

Hi Guys,
Not all WD have inside the box a software product key for booldy Memeo Auto Backup thing. You need to buy the software and until wou get tha cash you can use free trial version.
They are quite pathetic how the trick the clients with unfriendly software provided by a "third party".
So we need to dig for more cash for the "master of puppets"
Next time I will buy only products with hard and soft inclucluded in the box. I on a learning "curve".
Here I attached the answer from teh WD site:
Cheers, Calin
WD Anywhere Backup
WD Anywhere Backup comes on our drives as a 30 day trial version software only. In order to use it, permanently, you will need the product key. The following Western Digital products come packaged with the product key:

• Drives With Product Key - My Book Home, My Book Office, My Book Studio, My Book World, Passport Elite, My Book Mirror, and WD ShareSpace
  
  
• Trial Version Only - My Book Essential

Your product key can be found in the installation manual, on a sticker, in the technical support section. If you have one of the drives that comes with a product key, and your installation manual does not have the product key sticker, please contact us using the Ask WD A Question page for a replacement product key.
Memeo AutoSync
We do not provide a product key for Memeo AutoSync. Memeo AutoSync is a 30 day trial version, and you will need to purchase it from Memeo in order to obtain a product key.

I hope that helps!

To save your data from a bad Wd Ebook you need to download UBUNTU and burn it to a cd. Boot from the cd. Do not install Ubuntu just click try it out. When it loads turn on your Ebook and iit should appear on the desktop. If not click the places tab on top and find it there. Right click the EBook and mount it. Now you have access to all the data on the ebook. Iy yoou have enugh space n your cpu hard drive save it there, if not you will need another surce large enought to copy the data to.. I have used this method to save many hard drives, flash drive and other unreadable media. if the drive is totally toast you are out of luck but this method works moost of the time. Any questions drop me an email.

Shayne

I recenctly bought a my book 500 gig drive and it is usb.
the firsttime I plugged the usb cable in it worksed. I had only a 40 gig ide harddrive and so I ordered an internal 500 wd hard drive to replace it. The internal 500 gig is a sata drive. first I cloned the 40 to the sata 500 and then copied the external 500 to the internal. I mover the cables to then make the internal 500 sata my boot drive. The computer would no longer show the external e\when i used the windows explorer. the device manager said it was there and working with no problem but windows did not see it.
After several experiments with diferent configurations I have concluded my motherboard wasauto configuring the external and internal 500 drives as drive 0. Since the usb was detected first and was notthe boot drive then windows assigned the internal drive as drive 0 and since the usb drive was drive 0 also it would not work. windows ignored it. my solution was to return the ide as the boot drive and plug the sata into a slave port. with that configuration both drive are seen and work normally. It took me several days to find this arrangement. so since my sata ports are auto configure and the external has a sata connection i will install an esata port adapter and try to hook it up as a slave sata drive so i cab\n use my internal 500 sata drive as my boot drive.
sorry this was so long but it is my solution to what others may be facing.

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/unformat-tutorial.htm

This tutorial describes the procedure to recover one volume when

• the volume was accidentally formatted
• Windows reports the volume is "raw filesystem", or "not formatted"
• An external drive failed, either flash (so called "thumb drive") or an hard disk connected using USB or FireWire enclosure.
• MFT is corrupt on the NTFS volume, rendering filesystem partially or completely unreadable

The recovery is done in seven steps, requiring about eleven (11) mouse clicks. Note: The older than current versions of ZAR might have been used to create the screenshots in this tutorial. We did not update the screenshots if there is no significant difference between older and current versions. If you see some option in the program which is not described in the tutorial, just leave it at its default setting.

Step 1 - Get, install, and start ZAR
Download and install ZAR just like you do with any regular program.
When you run it, ZAR displays the window like the one below:

1. Click "Next >>"

Step 2 - Select processing mode

1. Select "Recover data from a simple volume or from a functional RAID volume"
2. Click "Next >>"

Step 3 - Select physical device to recover

1. Select the appropriate hard drive
2. Click "Next >>" for a list of volumes (logical disks) on this hard drive

I have this same problem and found a great write-up here that has text and photos of the process. I haven't tried the process with mine but there are plenty of responses to his posting indicating success. Good luck.

- mike

forgot my password