Question

Most of my storage in my house relies on a WD My Book World Edition 500GB network drive.

I threw out the vendor crapware they give you to access it (a trial version of Mionet) after it starting nagging me to upgrade, and set it up as a standard network drive using Window's Map Network Drive.

However, since then, it has been dropping off the network after 30 minutes of non-usage. The only way to get it back on is to switch it off and on again at the plug socket.

Does anyone know what is causing this, and hopefully how to fix it?

EDIT: it's the original "blue rings" version with the latest firmware.

Answer 1

Since it drops off after 30 minutes of non-usage my suggestion would be to prevent it from going 30 minutes without use. Sure, this is a software solution to a hardware problem, but it should work.

Use windows task scheduler on two different computers to schedule a task to run every 20 minutes that just copies the same dummy file to the drive. You could create a batch file or use any scripting languages you might be familiar with. If you want you could delete it after you copy it.

You want to set it to 20 minute intervals just in case one of them is late. Any you want to have two computers doing it just in case one of them is off line. If you are really paranoid then you could have all your computers doing it at 10 minute intervals. I wouldn't go much more often then that though.

I know it is a hack, but until they fix your firmware it might be your best choice.

Answer 2

I've had the same problem with a My Book Home. I had to update the firmware, and that did the trick. For some odd reason, it was only recognized on XP, and not 2003, so I had to plug it into my laptop, update the FW, then back into the Win 2K3 machine.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=117&lang=en for white light. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=106&lang=en for blue ring.

Answer 3

I had the same problem - I just dumped it - can't be doing with unreliable hardware for what was ultimately by backup solution.