eightdigitword

i had the same issues, worked for months on various computers using different cables. worked yesterday before i left the house came back to find it had decided not to work, nothing had changed. same cable, same system, no movement, no updates and yet it packed in on its own. tried all sorts of updates on usb power allocation, striped the unit down and checked the pcb, full works. almost gave up until i spotted an overlooked post on this forum of a fix using the short usb cable the unit was supplied with. now it works (dont ask). If you haven't tried this already then give it a bash. From what i can gather this is most likely a cable only issue, possibly a completely random uncontrollable malfunction, fingers crossed in the future. as spyros7 stated might be better to aviod WD external (specifically usb powered) hard drives.