Western Digital My Book Essential Edition (WDG1U5000N) 500 GB Hard Drive Logo
Anonymous Posted on Sep 26, 2008

Device Not Recognized in XP

I do not see any drivers for this model that I can download for XP. Do you have any suggestions on getting it recognized?

I have a WD 1TB (My Book) external HDD. It worked fine initially but I connected a USB2 hub to my computer recently and the computer has failed to recognise the WD HDD ever since. I have tried all the fixes that I have read on various forums (reinstall drivers, power off/on, use wall socket) and still no luck. I believe all 4 of my USB ports are USB1 (if this is of any consequence). Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated...

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  • Anonymous Sep 26, 2008

    Thanks for the thought. I removed the hub as soon as I started having problems and have not reconnected it. I mistakenly thought it was the hub giving me the error message when it was infact the HDD. Cheers

  • Anonymous Oct 27, 2008

    I tried many things. I finally connected the HDD into the USB hub (just for something different). For some reason the PC recognised the HDD (but it took some time). The speed was prohibitively and the next time I booted up it failed to recognise either the hub or the HDD again. I ended up just plugging the HDD back into its original USB port (ran out of fixes). Eventually "time" seemed to fix the problem as it all went back to normal after a few days and have had no problem since. Really bloody annoying not to have worked out the cause, but pleased to have all the kids photos back.

  • Anonymous Nov 13, 2008

    Thanks joul. I will definitely give this a shot if I have any subsequent problems. Sounds like a great fix.

  • Anonymous May 11, 2010

    Just curious, but have you tried removing the new hub, rebooting, and then see if your computer recognizes the HDD again?

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After unlocking WD my passport/E 500GB-B and double click on my passport drive this masage is appeare.
I:\ is not accessible. Access is denied.

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  • Posted on Feb 21, 2009
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Ok here is your solution on ALL of these external mybooks by Western Digital... If you are getting a device not recognised, and can't get to your disk in any other way what has happened is it's generic power and usb card that is connected to the hard drive inside it's plastic box has gone out. These western digital essential edition drives which look sealed actually have some tabs on the shiny plastic case about 1 inch in from the front on the bottom. Just put the tip of a streight screwdriver into the cooling slots. Gently pull up and back on the screwdriver bending the slotted area by the outer **** shaped cover 1 inch from the rounded front. Pull up and towards the back. Once you have both sides of the bottom front released, then try to gently pry the bottom center up above the side of the ****. Because there are 4 tabs (2 on each side) that extend down from the main housing with the cooler holes that just rest in a track that is in the inside of the outer shiny **** shell. Then repeat for the top of the drive unit. After a little work you can remove it sliding it all out of the back. Once the outer shell is off, you can pull the drive out with the SATA to power and USB card connected to the drive. There is a metal housing over this card. Remove the 2 screws on the top of the metal housing of the usb&power. Once removed the bad card can be slid down of the drive. You can then just plug the drive in in any SATA port with SATA power inside your computer. Or just buy an external drive housing from tigerdirect or newegg for $20 which will make any sata drive to an USB External. What can I say, Western Digital has crappy cards. I only found this out by my having 2 My Books. 1 worked, and one fowled.. So I took them both apart. Better than loosing my data seeing how they were my backup drives...

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  • Posted on Nov 12, 2008
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I had the same problem today and I solved it...
Go to the Western Digital official website, choose your model and download the driver for win98..it works magically with XP. Fast and easy :)

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  • Posted on Oct 23, 2008
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