[JonP]

Hello all, first post.

I am running Vista Business 64 bit on an AMD 3500 64 w/3G PC3200, with 512MB GeForce 6600 graphic card. It all seems to work fine for awhile then I bought this Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB external hard drive to move my backups from two other 200G & 250G internal IDE hard drives. For the first day the files transferred OK with no slowness or errors, then later on the files takes forever to transfer. Most of the files average between 10MB - 75MB and a few ISO images of 700MB - 2G each. The ISO files took nearly an hour and the smaller files took about 15 - 30 mins. to transfer. I can download the files faster than what some of them are transferring.

My question is what is the problem? I have not installed or made any changes to the system after installing this WD My Book hard drive. I'm about ready to remove Vista and go back to XP or Linux. This is ridiculously slow. I was transferring one 657MB ISO from a 250G IDE to the My Book and 30 mins. later it still says Calculating time remaining....

My other XP Pro 64 can transfer this same file in less than a min or two. Something is not right.

[Jason™]

JonP, on May 27 2007, 09:55 PM, said:

Hello all, first post.

I am running Vista Business 64 bit on an AMD 3500 64 w/3G PC3200, with 512MB GeForce 6600 graphic card. It all seems to work fine for awhile then I bought this Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB external hard drive to move my backups from two other 200G & 250G internal IDE hard drives. For the first day the files transferred OK with no slowness or errors, then later on the files takes forever to transfer. Most of the files average between 10MB - 75MB and a few ISO images of 700MB - 2G each. The ISO files took nearly an hour and the smaller files took about 15 - 30 mins. to transfer. I can download the files faster than what some of them are transferring.

My question is what is the problem? I have not installed or made any changes to the system after installing this WD My Book hard drive. I'm about ready to remove Vista and go back to XP or Linux. This is ridiculously slow. I was transferring one 657MB ISO from a 250G IDE to the My Book and 30 mins. later it still says Calculating time remaining....

My other XP Pro 64 can transfer this same file in less than a min or two. Something is not right.

I have noticed a reduction in transfer speed when coping files from Vista to my external 2.5" USB2 Drive, it took roughly 1hr20mins to copy about 20GB of mixed data when this takes about 35-40mins in XP copying the same data. I think there is an issue with USB2 speeds in Vista, if you notice in the forums most users have problems with devices not recognised or supported. The other thing could be the way in which Vista scans the file like windows defender or something like that slowing the process time down? its just a guess, I am using Vista 64 bit so that could be an issue and I know some users have 32bit and do have problems.

[Glove]

i am having a problem with this same exact product on vista also. I have Vista 32bit home premium. When i plug in the Western Digital 500GB My Book it says searching and installing necessary drivers. Then a message pops up saying that there was an error installing the drivers and the device is unusable. The same thing happened for my iPod, but oddly enough when i plugged in my mouse everything installed fine and the mouse worked. so i'm pretty confused. I went to the device manager and next to the device there is a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. i call my computers manufacturer and they suggested reinstalling windows. but i dont want to lose everything, and its not even guaranteed that it would fix it. if anyone has any ideas or suggestions i would greatly appreciate it. I'm willing to do anything to fix this, i just got this computer a month ago. also if u need any specific details or error messages just let me know, thx!!!

[essencemat]

UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! I am having the same problem. It can't find a driver and WD doesn't list one for vista. Any ideas?

essencemat@gmail.com

[Gallitin]

Same with me anyone have a solution yet? I'm having no luck finding any drivers for the My Book 500gig and my 160 gig passport which are both western digital. However, my seagate I found a driver for and it works perfectly now.

[JonP]

Gallitin, on Jul 22 2007, 03:14 PM, said:

Same with me anyone have a solution yet? I'm having no luck finding any drivers for the My Book 500gig and my 160 gig passport which are both western digital. However, my seagate I found a driver for and it works perfectly now.

Well I found my solution, just upgraded back to XP Pro 64 and it all works like it should. It may be awhile before I decide to reinstall Vista back on this computer. I might wait till SP1 is released and try it again. Even with an AMD 3500 64 w/4GB PC3200 ram and 512 PCIe video card, this computer runs slow with Vista64 compared to XP Pro64. I tried to do that anytime upgrade to Vista Ultimate 64 and it completely trashed this computer. I couldn't repair it or "go back" to previous configuration because the installation got corrupted at about 99% done. I think I'll stay with XP and Linux for the time being. Hope you all find a solution to your issues.

[Gallitin]

Did you try deleting the driver database? I just did it and still not working, but didn't know if I had made a mistake?

[kilomonk]

When the installer program asks for a location of the driver, tell it to look here:

C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

Where "C" is the drive you have VISTA on.

[Jason™]

Hi all, when I checked on the Western Digital site it says that you should use their programme called Data Lifeguard which will configure the drive, I have an internal SATA 2 HD made by Western Digital and the same applies to those drives you must use that software first.

See here and select the type of drive you are using, for Vista users who are having problems try and copy all of your data on that drive to another PC or HD and then format that drive using Data Lifeguard first and then hopefully Vista should recognise the drive properly you may have to do this process in XP or on another computer

http://support.wdc.com/download/

[Northrond]

Hi, there, I had quite similar problem, but then I formated whole disk from FAT32 into NTFS system. After that I tried and copied 50GB and it was accomplished in less that 30min... I didn't need any drivers at al as system recognized the external disk all by itself...

Oh, BTW, I use win vista ultimate x64, USB2.0, DualCore 2.0GHz, 2GB 667MHz RAM...

This post has been edited by Northrond: 10 March 2008 - 01:26 PM

[MikeyP4L]

Well I too also have a 500gb mybook and 64-bit operating system. the Mybook did not work for the first few times I tried to plug it in but eventually after enough cussing and yelling it started to work lol. Also I recommend trying different usbs because I had the same problems, but they are all gone now. just be persistant because I was getting ready to give up when it started working so....

[kaka0502]

kilomonk, on Sep 3 2007, 09:34 PM, said:

When the installer program asks for a location of the driver, tell it to look here:

C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository

Where "C" is the drive you have VISTA on.

Did not work for me.

[Whitewolf1218]

I have a WD 500GB MyBook, and just got SP1 for Vista, and transfer speeds are increased dramatically. For me, it went from 1MB/sec to 30-40MB/sec.

Go grab SP1 and things should be working ok.

My iPod Classic would have issues too, saying "device malfunctioned" etc etc... haven't plugged it in yet with SP1, but hopefully that was fixed

[ddwebb]

Whitewolf1218, on Apr 3 2008, 09:22 PM, said:

I have a WD 500GB MyBook, and just got SP1 for Vista, and transfer speeds are increased dramatically. For me, it went from 1MB/sec to 30-40MB/sec.

Go grab SP1 and things should be working ok.

My iPod Classic would have issues too, saying "device malfunctioned" etc etc... haven't plugged it in yet with SP1, but hopefully that was fixed

I purchased the WD MyBook Essential Edition 2, 1TB and wanted to install on my Vista Home Pro 32bit. It would not recognize the drive and no drivers were to be found. Go figure!
I moved the new drive to my other PC running XP Pro and it worked like a charm.
I did a number of searchs and found on MS web site that they authorized the WD drive using 64bit o/s. Microsoft site: http://winqual.micro...i...id=1004&g=d

So I wonder if that is the problem. So I have ordered the 64bit DVD (approx $10 bucks). I hoep in the next week to get that and determine that with the 64bit software from MS for my Vista, it will have the appropriate drivers and work.
Of course the Customer Support at WD has not responded to my question about new drivers for the Vista 32bit.
I can run this under XP Pro but that system is much slower than the Vista machine, so I would rather do it there.
Mainly using the WD for backups of several PC's and storage of critical files.

This post has been edited by ddwebb: 09 April 2008 - 05:21 PM

[GaryLog]

ddwebb, on Apr 9 2008, 06:10 PM, said:

Whitewolf1218, on Apr 3 2008, 09:22 PM, said:

I have a WD 500GB MyBook, and just got SP1 for Vista, and transfer speeds are increased dramatically. For me, it went from 1MB/sec to 30-40MB/sec.

Go grab SP1 and things should be working ok.

My iPod Classic would have issues too, saying "device malfunctioned" etc etc... haven't plugged it in yet with SP1, but hopefully that was fixed

I purchased the WD MyBook Essential Edition 2, 1TB and wanted to install on my Vista Home Pro 32bit. It would not recognize the drive and no drivers were to be found. Go figure!
I moved the new drive to my other PC running XP Pro and it worked like a charm.
I did a number of searchs and found on MS web site that they authorized the WD drive using 64bit o/s. Microsoft site: http://winqual.micro...i...id=1004&g=d

So I wonder if that is the problem. So I have ordered the 64bit DVD (approx $10 bucks). I hoep in the next week to get that and determine that with the 64bit software from MS for my Vista, it will have the appropriate drivers and work.
Of course the Customer Support at WD has not responded to my question about new drivers for the Vista 32bit.
I can run this under XP Pro but that system is much slower than the Vista machine, so I would rather do it there.
Mainly using the WD for backups of several PC's and storage of critical files.

I had the same problem where Vista Ultimate 64Bit would not reconize my external hard drives and my Canon printer, even though I downloaded and installed the driver for the printer from Canon.
I found out by accident one day when I had to reinstall my Vista Ultimate 64bit OS as a new install that if you leave all of the equipment that you want on your ssytem hooked up and on that Vista will see those items and install drivers for them during the installation process. After I installed Vista Ultimate 64bit all of my equipment External Hard drive printer etc work perfectly.

What a way to have to get your external equipment to work.

[liberty]

I found this and it work for me :
http://forum.hardwar...19.htm#t6402259

[UTBPro]

I have My WD My Book 320Gb Hooked Up eSATA and im getting the same problem with slow up/down/and searches... Its take me about 20% longer time just to enter into the My Computer Dir. No Solutions yet but if not soon My Books goin out the Window!

[Outerorbit]

I have an external WD My Book 250 GB and using Vista 32 bit...... I also have a Maxtor 250 GB external attached as well. Vista sees the Maxtor instantly. However, it doesn't usually see the My Book until almost an hour after booting up. I don't know if this will be the case with some of you here, but perhaps if you're patient, you will see the same results! I hope this helps..... Still blows that it isn't recognized immediately.