Moved the WD 3TB My Book (External) slightly and now it's unreadable :(

[lektrix]

Spilled some liquids and with quick instinct I moved the external hard drive from a horizontal position (it was lying down) to an upward position (proper standing up position) and then it suddenly died and became unreadable.... did that small but quick motion really damage the head??? I am so sad right now........ disk cannot be recognized in bios or Windows 7 and I can't even reuse the My Book shell for other hard disks........

 

[Dahak]

Most likely, if you moved it horizontally it might have been fine but it moving it from horizontal to vertical probably killed it...

I hate how sensitive ext hdds have become.

There is a chance if you power it off and back on it might work if you have not done that yet

 

[lektrix]

It powers on but the light keeps blinking endlessly, Windows asks me to re-initialize the disk and when I do it errors out. Any chance it can be physically repaired???????

 

[Elixer]

It powers on but the light keeps blinking endlessly, Windows asks me to re-initialize the disk and when I do it errors out. Any chance it can be physically repaired???????

If you have the hardware encrypted version of the My Book series, then, even Pros might have a hard time trying to recover anything. It is one of the WORST design moves WD has made. That means, you can't just open it up, stick it in the computer and try to recover the data.

If you don't have the encrypted version, and you don't have any warranty left, and you don't want to pay the Pros to try to recover, then, you could pop the HD on your home PC, then clone it over to another HD, and then, finally run recovery software on the cloned HD.

 

[myocardia]

...

 

[birthdaymonkey]

Actually professional drive recovery has become more affordable. My sister's laptop drive died (unrecognizable by the BIOS) and she sent it to Seagate (the manufacturer) who charged a flat $500 rate to recover all of her data - mostly years worth of irreplaceable photos, which of course weren't backed up. They then sent her an external drive with the data on it included in the cost.

Of course, if it's all encrypted... that's a different story.

 

[Erithan13]

Given the extraordinary tolerances inside modern HDDs I'm amazed they work at all let alone be able to go for years without failing (sometimes...). As was said with the drive lying down moving it sideways along the surface may have been a better option but you don't have the time to ponder the physics of this when you've just spilled something, benefit of hindsight and all that.

Try checking the power connection, I've had external drives do all sorts of strange things because of a slightly loose power plug. The problem may lie with the enclosure circuitry rather than the drive itself meaning the data could be recoverable. I wouldn't give up with it until you can verify the drive is definitely toast.

 

[jkauff]

This is a long shot but won't cost you anything to try. Call WD and have them send you a new drive cable. The proprietary USB cable connector is easily damaged, so try a new one. That worked for me when I had a My Book problem a couple of years ago.

 

[Elixer]

This is a long shot but won't cost you anything to try. Call WD and have them send you a new drive cable. The proprietary USB cable connector is easily damaged, so try a new one. That worked for me when I had a My Book problem a couple of years ago.

Eh? It isn't proprietary, it is just a normal USB3 cable.
http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-USB-Cable-Micro-Meters/dp/B008EQZ25K

 

[stockwiz]

I break them out of the enclosures and stick them in a third party one I bought off newegg. The pros to this is they are now formatted using a non proprietary sort of format that I can swap into my system or any system without worrying about not being able to read the data.

I guess that $500 is the price to pay for not making backups... always backup. My movie collection is so large and took so long to assemble I have that backed up in 3 places.. same with my FLAC file collection.. the time cost to replace that stuff would number in the dozens to hundreds of hours so I don't mind spending $100 on peace of mind.

Storage is cheap I don't need RAID, I'll just do direct, off site backups onto a 5 TB hard drive.

 

[jkauff]

Eh? It isn't proprietary, it is just a normal USB3 cable.

Well, it certainly looks like a normal cable, but I was under the impression that WD had modified the connector to support the drive encryption "feature". In any case, WD will supply a free replacement--no need for the OP to buy one.

 

[Elixer]

Well, it certainly looks like a normal cable, but I was under the impression that WD had modified the connector to support the drive encryption "feature". In any case, WD will supply a free replacement--no need for the OP to buy one.

No, cable has nothing to do with the drive encryption, that is all done by the controller card the cable hooks up to.

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Hey there lektrix,

I'm sorry for the problem with the My Book drive. Movement of any HDD while its working may cause problems with the mechanics as it is a physical mechanical unit with moving parts it it after all.
I would try to test the drive with a different cable on a different port and possibly on another computer and see if it's recognized in BIOS, Device Manager or Disk Management just to be sure the drive is the cause of the problem.

Have in mind that some newer WD My Book models feature hardware encryption which means the data on the drive cannot be read outside of the case and your best chance of getting your data back would be sending the drive to a data recovery company, though their services can be quite costly. Another thing to note would be that opening the enclosure in order to remove the drive void any warranty that the drive may have so I would advise against that.

Captain_WD.