MyBookLive being difficult

I made a backup of a computer a while ago just in case something went wrong. And sure enough, something went wrong and that backup is now needed. There's one small hiccup though: I made the backup to a MyBookLive.

Why is this a problem? I can't access the file and rummage around in it or get it off the device. Copy/Paste via Explorer (Win7), robocopy, ftp, and Copy/Paste via Konqueror in two versions of Linux all fail. I'd try a wireless connection to halve the transmission speed just in case the device cannot sustain long periods of transfer, but a 20 hour transfer time is too long (not to mention keeping a machine on for that long is going to create a lot of heat). I've moved the device and plugged it directly into the router, but that didn't help.

My first attempt to copy/paste went smoothly until about 90% completion, at which point the MyBookLive lost its net connection. No ping, no login, no access whatsoever. Over 3 days, every attempt after that has failed sooner and sooner with the same symptoms. Now it fails at 0.2% completion. I've updated the firmware twice (there was an intermediate firmware update before the latest could be installed). There are no errors, no bad packets, just an abrupt "No longer accessible" message and I can no longer communicate with the device for a few minutes.

I'm trying OSX now and while it hasn't failed yet, the traffic has stopped several times at less than 6% completion. I gave file splitting a shot with 7zip, but it reported an ever increasing time remaining and I stopped it after it quoted 41 hours. The odd thing was that while 7zip was creating nice 500MB chunks, the connection never dropped. It's like the device requires a give-and-take that is more significant than ACKs.

As much as I don't want to, it looks like I'm going to have to disassemble the drive completely (WD makes it hard to get to the drive itself without going through all the plastic bits and circuit boards), plug it directly into my PC, move the file off, and then put it back together. It's not like there's a warranty on it anymore (it expired years ago).

Odd Note: OSX reports the file as 10GB LARGER than what Windows or Linux report.

Update:

OSX just failed to copy it via Finder and the drive was not accessible for a few minutes, again. Disassembly it is.