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I have an XP machine (SP3, all updates) on my home network (workgroup) I plan to use as a backup box. I just bought a 3TB WD MyBook external USB drive as the backup target drive (shared, mapped network drive).

Something concerned me when I opened the box: the WD has a power switch on it (may be the problem???).

At any rate, when I reboot this machine with the WD attached, it hangs in BIOS. The moment I unplug the new WD USB drive, boot continues normally. If I plug it back in before exiting BIOS, it hangs again. If I wait until after seeing the XP startup screen, it continues to boot normally.

Otherwise, the drive also performs normally, no errors or dirty chkdsk bit. USB is not involved in boot sequence.

What do I do about this?

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I hate to give such a flip answer but, it's a WD MyBook. The only course of action as far as I'm concerned is to return it and purchase a different brand. I can't tell you how many problems I've seen with consumer USB drives from WD in the last several years.

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  • I fully support this statement. WD is terrible and I've had them do nothing but fail on me over the years. I recommend that all my clients use Seagate, personally. Also, I think I ran into this on a client's computer a few months back - I'm looking for an answer right now, and I'll throw one up if I find it.
    – eckza
    Apr 13, 2011 at 0:33
  • Another reason I build my own USB hard drives.
    – Moab
    Apr 13, 2011 at 1:12
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http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic123277.html

Try disabling Legacy USB in the BIOS. You might have to hunt around a little bit (because it's not in the boot order), but that should take care of it.

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Thanks for the answers except the anti-WD ones which obviously have nothing to do with answering this question, and I can't figure out why you wasted your time posting what can only be construed as disgruntled ex-client rants...

...but at any rate, disabling legacy USB didn't work either.

So what I ended up doing was plugging the drive into a machine with an older BIOS and voilà, it works. Not sure why a Gigabyte BIOS from 2008 would hang whereas an Asus 2006 BIOS would not, but that's what happened.

So, for anyone who comes here looking for the answer, I doubt you'll have the same situation, but there it is.

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