After a few month of non-usage it appears that my Western Digital My Book has stopped working. The drive powers on, so you can see the Green Circular LED, but when I plug the unit into my Windows 8 machine: Windows finds the drive, but after its all said and done it says USB Device Not Recognized. I tried everything from rebooting with drive plugged in to power cycling and cold booting the hard drive. One time I was able to see my file folders but the files were all missing.
As a result, I have decided to remove the SATA drive from the enclosure and plug it into my external USB to SATA dock:
http://www.frys.com/product/5816343?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
The process was very simple, but will basically require you to destroy your "not working" USB enclosure. The directions for removing the drive can be found here:
http://www.adcworks.com/2008/06/diy-how-to-rescue-data-from-your-western-digital-mybook/