Windows Disk Manager can 'see' the drive but wants to initialize it first. I do not know/recall if the drive was formatted as MBR or GPT, but being as it's ten years old (not heavily used, incidentally - I mostly let it sit idle for about 8-9 years in total) I would lean to NTFS over FAT32. Given this, I decided to bust open the USB case (the thing is long beyond warranty, being from 2011) and extract the drive itself to plug into a USB3 SATA external caddy. In the eventuality that you own a Western Digital drive and want to be able to make the most out of your HDD, permanently delete data or change RAID configurations, then perhaps WD Drive Utilities could come in handy.As the title indicates, I had a WD MyBook external drive with (unknown to me until too late) a badly soldered USB connection to the PCB with the SATA connectors. A handy application for managing WD hard drives efficiently Therefore, after you backup your important data, access the dedicated function and select the option for the mode that you want to change to.

It is worth mentioning that the program permits you to modify the configuration, but you should expect to lose all applications installed and files you store on the external drive in the process. Following a quick scan, the app displays the status of the RAID, which can vary from healthy to degraded or unknown and anything in between. On a side note, the default setting for WD drives is either Stripper (0), Mirrored (1) or Individual Drives (JBOD). Check the status and change the RAID configurationĪdvanced users can tackle with the RAID configuration settings and view or change them accordingly. The tool can also perform a lighter examination that focuses on detecting potential increases in temperature, noise or read and write errors, all of which can be indicators of an incoming failure and data loss. If the device has been sluggish lately, then you can opt for a complete drive test that analyzes each sector for error conditions. The utility enables you to perform several tests so you can determine whether the external drive is working properly.

Following a swift installation, you need to connect your WD drive in order to access the options and functions. Allows you to check the hard drive’s health and SMART statusįirst off, it is necessary to underline that the app does not recognize other manufacturers’ drive, but rather works with a handful of external hard drives from the My Passport, easystore and My Book Western Digital series. WD Drive Utilities is a lightweight program designed to lend you a hand with managing and configuring your Western Digital external HDD. Manage, tweak the functionality and diagnose potential problems you suspect with your Western Digital drive using this straightforward tool.ĭownload Now WD Drive Utilities Description

Diagnose wd my book external drive