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Why does my wd external hard drive keep disconnecting?

Author

Daniel Johnson

Published Feb 09, 2026

Why does my wd external hard drive keep disconnecting?

If your external hard drive keeps disconnecting, the problem might be the power-saving feature. Your PC might be configured to turn off USB devices after a while in order to save power. After doing that, your PC won’t turn off your USB devices to save power and problems with your external hard drive will be resolved.

How to stop external hard drive from disconnecting mac?

Why does my drive disconnect from my Mac?

  1. On your Mac, go to Preferences.
  2. Open Energy Saver.
  3. Disable the option to put hard disks to sleep when possible.
  4. If you are using a laptop, you might have to do this twice, once for Power Adapter and once for Battery, depending on when the problem occurs.

How do I eject my WD My Book?

When the Computer or My Computer window opens, locate your external storage device. Left-click once to highlight it then right-click. On the resulting pop-up window, click on Eject. Wait for the “Safe to Remove Hardware” message to come up and then remove your external storage device.

How do I fix my external hard drive from disconnecting?

How to Fix an External Hard Drive that Keeps Disconnecting

  1. 1: Switch USB ports.
  2. 2: Turn off USB power saving.
  3. 3: Disable the default boot process.
  4. 4: Check and repair hard drive errors.

Why does my WD Passport keep disconnecting from Mac?

You want to check “Prevent computer from sleeping” and uncheck “Put hard disks to sleep” and uncheck “Enable Power Nap”. You might want to download the Western Digital drive utility and make sure that the drives don’t sleep by themselves.

Why does my external hard drive keeps ejecting itself Mac?

Generally hard drives randomly ejecting suggests a hardware-based problem such as loss of power to the device or faulty cabling. As a result, the first step in tackling this problem is to try various combinations for managing power and connections: Plug devices directly into your Mac. Avoid daisy-chaining.

How do I keep my hard drive from going to sleep Mac?

Keep your Mac from going to sleep automatically: Click Power Adapter, then select “Prevent your Mac from sleeping automatically when the display is off.” Put hard disks to sleep: Click Battery or Power Adapter, then select “Put hard disks to sleep when possible.”

Can you just unplug an external hard drive?

Navigate to the bottom right corner of the bottom toolbar. If the USB icon is hidden, click the Up arrow. Locate the USB icon and find your external hard drive. Click Eject, and wait for a message stating it’s safe to disconnect.

Should I eject my external hard drive before shutdown?

If you power down your pc with a normal shutdown sequence, then you can leave them connected. If you power down in any other way (disconnecting power cord or holding down power button), then you should safely remove them first.

How do I stop my WD hard drive from going to sleep?

For Windows 7/Vista only:

  1. Click on the Windows (Start) menu.
  2. Select Control Panel.
  3. Select Power Options.
  4. Select Change Plan Settings.
  5. Select Change Advanced Power Settings and expand the Hard Disk tree.
  6. Under that, see the option to Turn off hard disk after: setting. Change it to never.

Why does my external hard drive keep popping up?

And the reason for “File Explorer keeps popping up” is that your external drive has a loose connection. And it keeps disconnecting/connecting, which forces your system to open File Explorer constantly. Open the Control Panel and choose AutoPlay. Uncheck the option “Use AutoPlay for all media and devices”.

Why does my Mac keep ejecting USB?

There are a few other instances that can cause random ejection of an external drive: Defective external drive cable. Defective external desktop drive power supply. Defective computer USB or Thunderbolt port.

How to fix device keeps disconnecting from network after latest update?

After latest update my device keeps disconnecting from the network. Only way to get it back is to pull the power and reconnect. Then it stays connected for about 10-15 minutes, and then disconnects again. Have tried waiting for about 20 hours, but it just won’t come back until restarted.

What are the drivers for the WD my book 4TB?

The Drivers are Intel USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller – 0100 (Microsoft) ver. 6.3.9600.16506 The WD My Book 4TB keeps on connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting every few seconds/minutes when plugged to USB 3.0 port.

Why does my Ethernet cable keep disconnecting?

If you have 2 ethernet cables plugging at the back of the device, try unplugging one (try to leave the “primary” one in), and leave it with a single one, to isolate issues that a 2 cable setup might be causing somehow.

Why do I have to disconnect MyCloud once a day?

Disconnecting once a day could be the default DHCP timeout of 24 hours; your router may be allocating a new IP address each time. Rather than setting a static IP at the Dashboard, I use my router’s control interface to set an infinite timeout for the address allocated to the MyCloud .