So I purchased a WD My Book Mac Edition USB 1TB Drive a couple of weeks go for my Mini. It worked fine for about the first week. I copied a bunch of files over and all was right. Then, one day I noticed that it disappeared from my volumes list. It doesn't even appear in the System Profiler as a USB device, though the drive's light does power on when I connect it to the mini. I've been trying to figure it out and have had no luck. I've tried different USB cables, connecting the drive directly to a power outlet instead of going into the power strip. I can connect it to my MacBook Pro 2.2GHz running the same OS version, and it mounts right up and seems to operate fine. Nothing I've done so far has been successful in getting the Mini to see that the drive is even connected to USB. Any suggestions? WD doesn't appear to have any firmware updates for my model drive (WDH1U10000AN).
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Mini won't recognize USB WD 1TB Drive
- Thread starter MDiddy
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drive inclousure might have died. I had a WD external drive case that just died one day. it would turn on and spin up the drive but it wouldn't mount. I removed the drive from the case...and was able to retrieve my information
Thanks for the reply. Was a symptom of your enclosure dying that it worked on another machine? I'm confused as to whether thats the issue with me. I think I remember reading a couple years back that mac models from 2005-06, like the Santa Rosa MacBook Pro put out more USB power than previous generations and I was wondering if that would have something to do with it. But if thats the case, I don't know why it worked at all. This is really frustrating.
just a question ,have you tried somthing else to connect via usb to the mini, try to borrow from a mate a other external drive or if you have something like it lying around connect that to the usb port maybe your usb in the mini has died
because if your mybook is connecting and mounting to your macbook there is nothing wrong with your drive so the problem has to be on the minis usb port either softwarewise or hardwarewise
because if your mybook is connecting and mounting to your macbook there is nothing wrong with your drive so the problem has to be on the minis usb port either softwarewise or hardwarewise
Well I have a USB keyboard and mouse connected to the Mini and they work fine. I even tried my Canon 500D/T1i camera and its recognized fine. I have a Maxtor drive with FireWire and USB 2.0 and both connections work fine on the Mini.
so , your maxtor hdd mounts fine on the mac , keyboard mouse and camera too , only the wd mybook does not , but it does on the macbook
so why would a hdd connect to one mac perfectly
but not to another when everything else even another hdd from another manufacturer does connect fine to it
so a shot in the blue is somehow your mac lost the driver for wd mybook
as all hdd`s use different drivers , that would explain why everything else works and why the mybook also works on your macbook
so why would a hdd connect to one mac perfectly
but not to another when everything else even another hdd from another manufacturer does connect fine to it
so a shot in the blue is somehow your mac lost the driver for wd mybook
as all hdd`s use different drivers , that would explain why everything else works and why the mybook also works on your macbook
I've read random mentions of power differences between the USB ports on my Mini vs. MBP, but haven't been able to test this since I don't have a powered USB hub. Do disk drives still need drivers? I thought that got done away with years ago for common uses. I don't think its a driver issue anyway because my mini doesn't even recognize that a USB device is connected - which I think occurs before the driver would be an issue. This is a head scratcher for sure.