Advice on MyBook Premium 320Gb

Hi,
I am hoping to get some advice about whether to istall the software that was shipped with my mybook premium 320Gb hard drive. I have not used an external hard drive before and am new to Mac too. I have read that there have been some problems with the button manager software provided and I would also like some advice about backup software. I bought the drive to help with video editting but i would also like to back up photo's and music. I have formatted the drive to HFS+ (?) as that was reccomended for macs. Please can someone give me some advice on what to do next. Thanks
Macbook Pro 15 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi and welcome to Discussions,
I also have a WD Mybook and after some considerations I decided against installation of the software.
As far as I remember the Button Manager helps in switching off the Drive if you want to do so and when you have unmounted it beforehand(which I don't).
Since the WD Mybooks don't have a physical power switch this could be useful sometimes.
As for your Backup purposes it can be helpful to install the Retrospect version that came with the Mybook but that's up to you.
I don't use it as I'm making backups of my MP3s with the Finder.
Have Fun
Stefan

Similar Messages

WD MyBook Premium 320GB Firewire not recognized on my MBP?

Hey guys,
First off, thank you for the help anyone is willing to offer.
Ok, so i have a MBP Intel Core Duo (1gb RAM) and use it to record music on. But basically, i have a WD MyBook Premium 320GB drive that works perfectly fine via USB. It powers up, mounts, and i can back anything i want on it. I formatted the drive to Mac Extended Journal format.
I would like to use the firewire port though, just to keep my USB ports open. When i plug it via Firewire i get nada. I plug it in and power up the MBP and the drive doesnt power up, so i turn it on and it doesnt mount. Now, THis is the second one i have, i had the same one a few weeks ago and returned it for this one thinking the drive was defective but its obviously not. is there anyway to "turn on" or Fix this issue with the firewire not recognizing the drive?
thanks alot for the help
Macbook Pro 15" Intel Core Cuo Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Ace King, in case you're still dealing with this I figured it out:
I called tech support for an hour. First lady I talked to told me the firewire cable that was supplied with the drive is defective (she knew the problem right away). Tried my own cable but it still didn't work. She put me on to "Level 2"....ooooooh....now I'm getting somewhere? No, wait for 15 more minutes listening to terrible muzak...
Anyways while I was waiting I thought I'd try my good cable in the other port on the drive and oila! So when the dude gets on the phone I ask him what the deal is...get this:
"The faulty cable most likely fried the port." Wow...not only is the cable crap it actually destroys their product...someone must have lost their job for that one. Seems like sabotage almost...anyways, there you go. Return it and DO NOT use the cable supplied.
Cheers!

Western DIgital My Book Premium 320GB Firewire Problem

I have a WD My Book Premium 320GB hard drive and I have used it before with the firewire port working fine. Now I tried it today and it wont connect. The USB port works, but the firewire does nothing. I have been searching for a solution for this but I havent found a clear answer. Thanks ahead of time. -Angryshoe

Angryshoe wrote:
It does not show up in system profiler.
OK then. I'd say set up an appointment at your nearest Apple store and have them look at it (typically for free I believe). At the very least, they should be able to diagnose whether or not the problem is with the drive, MacBook, or cable.

Best 1TB Firewire 800 Drive Solution - WD MyBook Premium

Hey guys, looking for opinions here. I am going to be buying a new Intel iMac. I know that firewire drives are not cpu specific. But my main two options are looking like either A) a metal gear dual sata raid firewire enclosure and buying my own two drives... or for about the same price I could get the Western Digital MyBook Premium that is the same thing, but comes together in one piece. The thing I like about the western digital is that it is all a single package, seems like it will be quieter, and overall be better integrated. but the thing i like about the metal gear solution is that the raid is controlled through some switches on the back whereas the Western digital is controlled through software that has to be installed. I am always against installing software to run in the background when i don't have too. So anyone here tested any of these western digital raid drives to see if that software just totally *****, or is it totally fine?
Western Digital MyBook:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136100
Metal Gear Enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817716028
Thanks for any Help in Advance

OK, I'll tell you what I think. I wouldn't touch either of them.
Most of these 1TB drives on the market right now contain 2 drives and are configured as RAID Spanning. Although nice in the sense that it 'appears' to be a 1TB drive, if either drive fails you're SOL with both drives. I think that's too risky to chance. Also, the WD software is probably Windows only (has been in the past ...)
I'd get an OWC Mercury Elite FW enclosure and put Seagage Barracudas in it (7200.9 or 7200.10's) and configure it as a JBOD (no spanning) with 2 x 500GB drives (or whatever size you get) .

Western Digital MYBOOK Premium! **Issues**

I am getting bombarded with clients giving me the Western Digital MyBooks... and I am having the same issue on all of them!
At first, I had to format them using Disk Utility as "MAC OS EXTENDED" to avoid a disk error saying that the hard drive was full. After re-formating the drive, the transfer speeds are retardedly slow. (eg - about 28 hour to transfer 74 gigs).
I called Western Digital and they told me the hard-drive was defective. However, this is a familiar problem with the Western Digital brand.
I was wondering if there is a manual way to enhance the transfer speeds. I have it connected via USB 2.0 .

I don't know if this will be of any help for you since you are running the USB version of the mybook. We had a situation where we were using two 2TB Mybooks for secondary backup of a server. the Mybooks would lock up the finder after a few days, and we have had multiple issues with them. We found that the server was reporting a stuck process right off the bat after rebooting. It was a western digital program/driver for the mybook. Try deleting the below file and see how it works. USB will still be a bit slower than firewire however.
<volume>/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.WD.WDDriveServices.plist

WD MyBook Premium External Drive Giving Problems

This is to transfer files from Mac to PC and generally for backup. I understand 128Gb is a limit for OS X 10.3 I'm using to recognise on a MS-DOS format on this 250Gb disk. I formatted this disk with Disk Utility as a single partition with all the data I wanted to transfer. During that process, the Finder has a big crash and wouldn't relaunch and needed a cold reboot to get anywhere after that, after which the Mac would not see the drive again. I took the drive to a PC, which liked the drive, got all the data. Take drive back to the Mac - sees it again for a few minutes. Then Finder crashes again. Drive disappears. It will not show in Disk Utility. I want to reformat as HFS+. How do I do that? It won't show.
Only good for the bin. How do I see that drive?
Thanks

Hi,
Trying booting from the Install Disc and checking whether the drive shows up in Disk Utility there?
SiR G.

New Western Digital "MyBook Premium Edition II" not mounting on firewire

I've just purchased a new WD external hard drive 1TB with triple interface. I've followed all the instructions to connect it via firewire 800 with no use. Tried firewire 400 also with no use. It only connected through USB 2.0. I tried re-partitioning the disk through the disk utility as it was mentioned in the instructions. Restarted my iMac. Nothing worked.
I made sure my firewire ports are working through connecting my older Maxtor II 300GB through the firewire 400. It was working as usual perfectly.
I tried connecting and disconnecting and restarting. Nothing seems to help. Is there anything wrong with the hard drive or is this an iMac issue?? I can't seem to make it work and everything on the manufacturer's technical support site isn't helping.
I've read a few issues on the forums here about firewire HDs not mounting. Can someone provide me with some guidance here??
Thanks

I read this post from "mucmacian" on the Macrumors site. It solved the firewire problem for me:
"Firewire 400 workaround
Some people may be experiencing issues connecting Firewire 400 devices to their new Aluminum iMacs.
At least for me, I've been messing around with an iBook G4 and my new 24" iMac, beeing unable to get the iBook connected to the iMac in target mode.
After a long lasting call with a very kind person at Apple Support, they contacted some cupertino based third level support guys and came up with a workaround:
As they stated, few users are having problems with Firewire 400 devices, even when connecting several Apple computers (depending on model and revision) in target mode to their new Aluminum iMac.
As far as I understood, the issue is related to low voltage input (diverging from Firewire specification?!?), meaning, the connected device is not able to deliver enough power through Firewire to work properly.
Simply connect the device using a Firewire hub with its own power supply, and things will work fine. At least, they did for me."

Advice pls: V.slow transfer speeds to external FW HDD ... but not always!

I've a WD MyBook Premium 320Gb external drive and I'm getting very poor transfer rates via firewire.
Most of the time I drag and drop multimedia files (mpg or avi) between Finder windows and I get transfers of around 300-350Mb/minute. However on two occasions recently the rate has increased to roughly 1Gb/minute. I can't account for why there is such a huge differential in transfer speeds in the same file type - and neither can Western Digital.
By way of comparison I get roughly 1Gb/m transfer speeds from a USB2 Sandisk flashpen to the iMac, matching the speed increase I've seen on two occasions via firewire.
So I guess the questions that arise are
1. what speeds should I get when transferring large files across firewire? I don't expect the theoretical 400mbps sustained.
2. would speeds be better using USB2?
3. what format should the external drive be and does it make a difference to performance? It's currently HFS+ Journalled though WD say that's not ideal.
Thanks
iMac Core Duo 1GB Mac OS X (10.4.7) iBook G3-800 & Airport §

I've been digging around a little more and I've found a CNET review of the most popular external drives and Seagate was worst but the MyBook wasn't too fast except for reading whereas the IOMega was the fastest for writing via firewire but not USB.
I think I'm going to have to live with the performance poor though it is for writing. Hopefully the format will improve things a little, if not it's one of the most attractive drive out there so I'll have to appreciate it for its aesthetics.

Time Machine and file system errors?

Hardware:
- 15" MBP 2GHz (mid 2006) 10.5
- WD MyBook Premium 320gb
Problem:
Time Machine backs up to a partition on the MyBook (drive is GUID partition table, partition is Mac OS Extended). Immediately after a TM backup to a reformatted partition, Disk Utility may or may not detect invalid sibling links, invalid key lengths, or other errors. If it does not detect them after the initial backup, subsequent backups of recently changed files will cause said errors. This is consistent; its occurrence is not a "maybe".
Disk Utility cannot fix these errors. fsck_hfs has had success in fixing these errors once. As I type fsck_hfs is running a second time, so we'll see the results from that. The first run produced the following:
fsck_hfs -ypr /dev/disk1s2
*Invalid node structure*
(4, 44282)
*Invalid volume file count*
(It should be 832071 instead of 802858)
*Invalid volume directory count*
(It should be 181916 instead of 177095)
*Invalid volume free block count*
(It should be 13931374 instead of 14042565)
*Volume Header needs minor repair*
(2, 0)
Questions:
- Of what is this behavior indicative?
- Is the MyBook necessarily bad?
- Is TM somehow the cause?
- Could bad sectors on the MyBook be the cause?
- Is the drive within the MBP the source of these problems (Disk Utility has not previously found any errors...)?
I'm really at a loss...

Boot from the OS X installer disc that came with the computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears.
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert OS X Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.

Advice request - which external HDD for Adobe Lightroom?

Hi,
I'm going to buy myself an external hdd this week, and I would be very grateful for your advice.
1) I'm shooting with Nikon D70, Canon A520, and my mobile(;]).
2) After over 1 year of shooting I have ~130GB of photos taken with these cameras + I have some negative from analog times, which I'm going to scan (I estimate them to be next ~20GB)
3) I would like to keep all of above photos on external hdd and import them into Abobe Lightroom (tagging + developing), and and of course apply retouching to some of them in PS CS2.
4) My computers are : old PC desktop with XP, on which I will be only viewing these pictures, and IBM T43 with Vista on which I'm going to do all the developing. [Yes, I know that Apple is better, and I love Apple, but I can'tafford one yet].
Given above assumptions, which external hdd from the ones I've preselected should I choose ? I'm on the budget here, and the ones that I can afford are :
WD My Book Pro 250GB USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 16MB Cache
WD My Book Premium 320GB USB 2.0/FireWire400 8MB Cache
WD My Book Essential 500GB USB2.0 8MB Cache
LaCie Porsche 500GB USB 2.0 8MB Cache
I'm asking mainly because I don't have any idea about how fast should a drive be to work with Lightroom with decent speed.
Also : should I buy FireWire controller for my T43 laptop, or will USB 2.0 be enough for my purposes ?
Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.
Chris

>Yes, I know that Apple is better, and I love Apple, but I can't afford one yet
Either a PC or MAC is fine, but you've entered a field where affordability is proportional to the number of photos you manage, the type of processing you perform and the level of security you are comfortable with. This is entirely separate of your budget.
USB2 and/or Firewire Drives work fine. From your list, I've owned both the LaCie Porsche and a WD MyBook. They both failed for different reasons. All hard drives will eventually fail. If you can't afford to lose your photo library you need some sort of redundency. The reliability of that redundency (RAID) and or speed of retrieval determines what technology is the minimum you need to afford. Or, if you have more time than budget, you can archive on DVDs. Keep in mind that even DVD's will fail over time.
The faster the drive, the faster the backup (redundency), the faster the throughput, and the faster you have access to managing and processing your image library.
Did I answer your question: No. However, whatever you get, and assuming you value your photos, make sure you get two of them so you can build some redundency into your budget. If you're feeling lucky, get the largest drive you can afford and make sure you leave yourself a lot of time for those backups.
Welcome to "photo shoebox management" of the new millenium! It ain't cheap ... :-)

font color="2200cc" WD MyBook Pro experiences. /font

Hello all, thanks for taking the time to read this.
Discussion on the WD MyBook Premium drive in this thread (link) seems to be reasonably inconclusive. The Premium differs from the Pro due to the FW800 connection and the fact that the Pro does not use WD's own software - hence the different thread.
My MyBook Pro has worked for many months like a charm booting my iMac G4 (FW400) following SuperDuper clones. It also works very fast connected to my Alu iMac 2.8GHz via FW800. However I am unable to boot this Alu Intel iMac via USB2.0, FW400 or FW800. This leads me to suspect that this isn't a WD drive issue but more an issue with booting on the Alu iMacs. I know some people have had success when a FW hub has been in the chain however I do not have such a device. I'd be interested to hear from anyone with their experiences of booting Intel (specifically Aluminium) iMacs from external drives.
I am fully up-to-date on software, iMac Update 1.3 applied, then 10.5.1.
Thanks in advance.
mrtotes

Hi Rick,
Thanks for your post. The problem for me is that troubleshooting in isolation my drive works perfectly with two Macs but will not boot the third, implying an issue with the third Mac, especially given the early Firewire issues with Alu iMacs.
Rather than waste too many of my processor cycles worrying about it I think the WD will probably serve as a TimeMachine drive where booting is not required and I will procure another drive for SuperDuper/cloning use.
I'll leave this thread open to collect other's views.
cheers
mrtotes

Desktop or Disk Utility won't show External Hard Drives

The Desktop or Disk Utility won't show 2 of my old external hard drives and so they are currently unsusable. My computer however recognise other external drives.
320GB Western Digital MyBook Premium model number: WD3200D032-000
500 GB Western Digital MyBook Premium model number: WD5000E032
I have same issues both of these external drives.
The blue circle lights come on so power is getting to it.
Tried 2 USB cables, one I know for sure is working - Nothing.
I am using Lion 10.7.4 on a mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro
All efforts to help much appreciated

No they haven't worked on this computer before. I using them on my old MacBook Pro (a computer which is no longer working) which ran Snow Leopard.
The 500GB drive "stopped working" with that old MBP too
But the 320GB drive was always working with old MBP if I remember correctly.
Cheers

Can no longer connect to encripted wireless.

Hello,
I am running a wired and WPA TKIP Encripted wireless network through a WRT350N and Netopia DSL modem. I have a Western Digital Mybook Premium 500GB hard drive connected for storage.
The system had included 2 XP Home PCs one using a Linksys WMP54GS Wireless PCI adapter and the other using a Netgear “G” USB adapter configured through Windows since the Netgear software would only do WEP. There are also 2 laptops one being an older model with the Linksys “G” PCMCIA and a newer Core2Duo using Intel Proset.
February I built a New PC which I connected via CAT5 which required moving the WRT350N, modem and 500GB MyBook into the computer room. In this room we also have our Dual mode 2.4 Ghz Linksys CIT300 Skype phone and our 2.4Ghz main phone. The new PC also has a Logitech G7 mouse using 2.4Ghz wireless. Everything ran smoothly for just over a month.
Around the same time as the start of the network connection Issues I swapped the Motherboard in the New PC with an SLI version and set the machine back up still using CAT5 and no wireless.
I cannot say for certain that we didn’t have any issues before the time of the swap but it did become very noticeable around the same time and I just want to cover all the bases.
What happened is the wireless PCs slowed down a bit and then the Netgear connected PC started to have disconnect issues that were very noticeable since it was the machine that pulls our e-mail. We then noticed the Linksys G Desktop having connection speed issues and then finally all the wireless machines will no longer connect via encrypted wireless at all. If I reset the Router they connect without a problem. I can change the SSID and turn off the SSID Broadcast without a problem but the moment I turn on WPA Personal, TKIP, and set a password they all lose connection and will refuse to connect. I have sat down at each machine and deleted the wireless profiles and set them up with all the same SSID, Security, and keys but they will not connect.
I even ran Net Stumbler on my Laptop to look for other wireless networks but only find one on Channel 11. Mine shows up too but at Channel 1 using the 40Mhz channel. Network mode is set to Mixed, Radio band is auto, Wide Channel is auto, Standard channel is also Auto.
Is there anything else I may be missing? I have reset the router many times and have tried restoring from saved configurations but nothing works at all. The only thing that works now is the wired connection. L
I sure hope Linksys reads these forums because they sure do not read their tech support e-mails!
I look forward to any help.
Thanks,
Martin

First of all, re-download and re-install the latest firmware for your router. After installing the latest firmware, make sure you reset the router to factory defaults, then set up the router from scratch.
Next, make sure you have a unique SSID (don't use "linksys" ), and turn on SSID broadcast. Turning on SSID broadcast makes it easier for your computers to find and stay connected to your router. I used to recommend that SSID broadcast be turned off for security reasons, but this is no longer required because new "cracking" techniques have made this old trick useless.
As a test, turn off all your 2.4 GHz devices and unplug them from the wall. This would include your phones, wireless mouse, and any Bluetooth, wireless baby monitors, microwave ovens, wireless keyboards, etc. Also, turn off any 5+ GHz phones, as some of these also use the 2.4 GHz band. See if this makes a difference.
Since your Netgear "would only do WEP", I don't understand how you ever got it to work before with WPA encryption. Please explain. Are you saying that the Windows software was doing the WPA for you?
Update you computers with the latest drivers for your wireless adapters.
As infinityx mentioned, update Windows XP to at least SP2.
It sounds like you may have the Intel Pro Wireless 2200bg card. If so, this card is known to have connection problems. The problems with this card worsened with a recent Windows update, but were fixed with the latest driver. Go to the Intel web site and download and install the latest drivers.
Also, you can try another channel on your router. Since you have a neighbor on 11, try any channel 1 thru 6. (Always try to stay at least +5 or -5 channels from your strongest neighbors.).
Message Edited by toomanydonuts on 03-16-200704:01 AM

Very slow transfer speeds with external hard drives through Firewire and US

Hi All,
My external drives transfer very slowly on my MacPro. I've been searching for answers and have turned up very little. Apple support suggested I post my issue here. Just to make a note, I measured my disk speeds with both AJA System Test and copying files between drives and reading the Disk Activity in Activity Monitor.
I have 3 external drives, all MyBook Premium or Professional, 1x 500GB, 1x 1TB and 2x 1TB in RAID 0. I had them on Firewire 400 and the RAID 0 2TB one on Firewire 800. My transfers on FW were all around 24MB/sec on all drives (much less than what I should be getting with FW400). I then read somewhere that the FW bus on the MacPro uses the slowest speed connected for all FW connections. So I unplugged everything but the FW800 Raid 0 drive and my transfer rate jumped to 40-60MB/sec. This is much better, but still about half or so of what I expect it should be producing from an external RAID 0 setup.
To keep my FW800 backup drive faster, I've plugged the other two into USB2.0. The transfer speeds on both drives are now hideous, around 10-15MB/sec. This is so slow, but I'm not sure what to try to fix my speeds.
The HD's in the external drives are all 7200rpm, and all should be transferring at a higher rate. Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Ideally I'd like to get everything transferring at rates they should be transferring at, but I'll settle with my current FW800 speed of 40-60MB/sec if I can get my other two drives transferring at a non-snail pace.
Is this a common issue? I can't believe I'm the only one plugging multiple external hard drives into their Mac Pro. I hope someone has a fix or solution for this. I'm all ears!
Thanks in advance.

Hi Kappy, thanks for the information.
So I rejigged my setup a tad. My RAID 0 is still FW800, the second drive is back on FW400 on the back port, and the third is USB 2.0 on the back as well.
It's interesting to note that I saw the FW800 taking a bandwidth hit if the FW400 drives was being read/written to. For example, if I was averaging 50-60MB/sec on the FW800 drives and copy something large to the FW400 drive, each drive averages out to about 30/MB second, roughly half the FW800 speed I was getting. The USB while the slowest didn't cause any slowness on the FW drives.
Here are my Xbench results. These results are from each drive being benchmarked individually with no other drives being tested at the same time.
*MyBook 2TB in a RAID 0 configuration: Firewire 800*
Results 75.42
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 75.42
Sequential 80.92
Uncached Write 69.16 42.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 110.79 62.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 53.66 15.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 136.76 68.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.62
Uncached Write 36.38 3.85 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 140.55 45.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.26 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.38 16.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 1TB on Firewire 400*
Results 47.73
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD My Book
Disk Test 47.73
Sequential 52.47
Uncached Write 48.45 29.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 53.76 30.42 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.69 12.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 70.91 35.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 43.78
Uncached Write 17.29 1.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 98.83 31.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 76.33 0.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.01 18.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
*MyBook 500GB on USB 2.0*
Results 40.60
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.5 (9F33)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro3,1
Drive Type WD 5000AA External
Disk Test 40.60
Sequential 35.99
Uncached Write 37.31 22.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.22 21.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 26.62 7.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 50.27 25.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 46.55
Uncached Write 20.37 2.16 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.44 21.91 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 93.55 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 86.71 16.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
So Kappy are you saying that those speeds look normal?
Thanks

Is this a good idea? Question about backing up data

Hi,
I have a MacBook Pro that is about two years old. It's working well.
I have a year old WD MyBook premium edition, 500GB, that I've been using as an external hard drive to back up my data. Recently, it was working fine (as recent as three days ago). Now, all of a sudden, it won't mount onto my computer. I've tried it in both the USB and Firewire ports, as well as on a different MacBook, and it won't mount anywhere. I also turned it on and off, turned off the computer, connected everything in a different order, etc. Then, I tried it on a PC with XP and it had no problem finding the drive and I was able to open it.
So I called WD tech support and he told me to do this:
-Connect the external hard drive to the PC
-Drag/drop all of the data on the drive onto the PC
-Reformat the external hard drive in Windows
-Drag and drop/put the data back on it
-Try to connect it back to the MacBook pro, where it should mount
He said something about partitioning the drive, which I sort-of understand what he meant, but not completely. This process seems like it will be long and may not work, so I wanted to get someone else's opinion before I started it. Does this seem like the right idea to get the hard drive to mount?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I see four possible alternatives, in varying degrees of severity:
# There's some minor problem with the volume, preventing an automatic mount. Start up Disk Utility, plug the drive in (preferably via FireWire). Does the device appear on the left column of D.U.'s window? With the volume name greyed out underneath? If this is the case, try doing a Disk Repair on it: if any errors pop up, you will have to redo the repair until you get no more error messages or D.U. says it can't repair and you need to use stronger stuff.
# The volume is severely damaged and/or the partition is shot. In this case, the device pops up in D.U., but no volume name appears underneath or you get a generic name. In this case, stronger stuff is mandatory, such as Disk Warrior.
# The electronics of the drive are damaged, so that nothing appears on D.U.'s window when you plug the drive in on yours and other Macs and with both FireWire or USB. This can be caused by damage to the power supply (drive isn't turning on), the USB/FW bridgeboard that connects those interfaces with the HDD's ATA/SATA controller, or the HDD controller card itself. This would mean that the drive is, indeed, dead but if the HDD still works, you may be able to salvage it by opening the case up, taking the HDD out and putting it in another case, at least till you copy your info over to another drive. Then, if there's any sort of warranty left, you can put it back together and send it in.
# Your Mac's interface ports (USB/FW) are somehow compromised and not working. Does the drive mount on another Mac? Have you tried resetting the Mac's PRAM/NVRAM and the System Management Controller (SMC)? Are you able to connect your Mac to another via Target Disk Mode?
Since tools such as Disk Warrior are expensive, some Apple shops may offer checking/repairing your drive with them, for a fee.

Advice on MyBook Premium 320Gb

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