Need help with WD External Hard Drive

[musicalmidgit]

My WD Hard drive has been working perfectly fine for months on my computer. The other day it wouldn't appear in my computer but it still says its connected in device manager and in the Computer Manager thing it says it's unreadable. Could someone give me help but assume I'm not completely pro on computers? I've found forums with answers but all stuff I don't understand!

 

[Brink]

Hello Musicalmidgit, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You might see if restarting the computer, or unplugging the drive and plugging it back into a different USB port may help.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[usasma]

I just lost my second Western Digital My Book about 2 weeks ago. The first one was covered under the warranty - but this one wasn't.

Luckily I had most everything backed up from it - so I figured it wasn't a great loss when I ripped the case open and slaved the hard drive to another computer. To my surprise the hard drive is in perfect condition - it's the My Book case and circuits that were messed up (even more so because I truly did rip it open).

The moral of this story is that the drive may be OK - so don't try to fix it unless you've already recovered the data.

 

[patio]

I'd also stay away from the My Book software as well if you have one of these...i'm not sure if WD has sorted out the glitches as of yet.

 

[musicalmidgit]

I've tried restarting it, using different computers and ports etc. It does the same thing on all of them. I can't really rip it open in fear I will lose everything on it. It is everything from past 2 computers that had to get new hard drives so pretty much everything my family owns is on it

 

[Brink]

Also try using a different data and power cable, to see if one them may have gone bad. Does it seem like the drive is powering up and spinning?

 

[zigzag3143]

If absolutley everything else has failed and you are not going to send it out to be recovered there is an oldtimers trick. USE ONLY AS LAST RESORT. If you put it in the freezer for abt 15 minutes then pull it out and connect it you may just buy enough time to pull data off it.

It doesn't work all the time but around 50% isn't too bad. I have completely recovered 40 gig drives to other working drives before the damaged drive has failed

good luck and I hope you dont need to try it


Ken

 

[musicalmidgit]

I worked out it has the same connection cable as my printer so I tried using that and it doesn't work. And may I ask just how you "stumbled" upon putting it in the freezer!

 

[patio]

I know this was asked but is the drive spinning up ? ?

 

[musicalmidgit]

Yeah it is (forgot to answer that before :P)
The light is on and everything so it's not a power issue

 

[Brink]

Musicalmidget,

It's sounds like the drive may be dead then.

To be certain, select your hard drive from the WD link below and download and run the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tool for Windows for that HDD.

WD Support > Downloads > Select Product

Here is a link to see what the error codes stand for when using that program.
WD Support > Knowledge Base > Diagnostic Error Codes

Hope this helps,
Shawn