My Book Elite 2.0 Firmware Fail [ Edited ]

[aclifford68]

I just purchased this External Drive today.  I installed and it was all working fine. The WD SmartWare program said that there were updates available for it so I clicked which took me to the website to update. I downloaded the updater for firmware and went through the options. A minute or so in a box popped up with an error and my computer restarted before I even realized what was going on. Now, when I plug in the drive. It installs as an "Initio Combo Device Class" and is not detected under my computer as a drive. It is essentially an expensive paper weight right now and I can't find a fix yet online. 

also, I have tried on several different computers and each one installs it as the "Initio Combo Device Class". The main computer is vista and have tried it on 2 computers with XP and 1 other with vista.

Thanks,

Adam

[mellentine]

Same thing happened to me, and I can't find answers online.

[beaverboy56]

Same exact problem...everytime I uninstall and reinstall in device manager it keeps installing initio

[SrRealist]

the same thing has happend to me. it would seem i just lost 120 GB of data.

uh, a little help?

[beaverboy56]

I just bought mine today on sale at Best Buy...I guess I'll be returning it tomorrow

[beaverboy56]

There is new SmartWare today...does this fix anyones problem. I refuse to update the firmware on this drive (I went back and got a replacement) until I know this is working...

[beaverboy56]

Out of curiousity...did anyone here experiencing these problems have the password (in smartware) protecting their drive before updating the firmware (and didn't remove the password before updating...). I did and I wonder if that's whats locking the drives out...

[Bill_S]

I've escalated this thread to our product people.  Not sure what's going on, but let's see what happens.

[pipermalibu2]

I can add, that this has now happened on TWO drives. Both of them are the 1.5TB Elite drives.  BOTH brand new, and one tried on a MAC and the other a PC. After attempting firmware update (btw, I am a pc technician, not a noob) the firmware update bricks the drive. The drive no longer rotates and the display eventually fades out to nothing after a few hours. The drives are effectively dead at this point.

[wilbur101]

I have exactly the same problem.  My g/f bought me a 1TB drive which worked at first but after updating the firmware isn't recognised on any computer.

I now have a shiny black paperweight.

#fail WD