problem with a WD Mybook 500gb

[mornir]

Yesterday Windows 7 stopped recognizing my external HDD (My Book WD 500gb). Windows claims everything is ok and up to date, and it appears to see the disk, but it tells me that it is empty and has 559 mb of 559 mb available. I have tried uninstalling/disconnecting, that hasnt worked. I've updated chipset, and yanked out most of the hair on my left arm while frantically searching google. I really do not want to format it although that seems possible, I have stuff on there I need. When I go to disk mgmt it does seem to see the actual size of the disk, but it still tells me the folder is empty. I have tried removing all usb connections, and reinstalling/plugging in, I have tried a couple different things off of Hiren's bootcd, but I really do not want to format the driver I have over 300gb of stuff on there. It was working fine on my old XP machine for a year and then for 4 months on this 7 machine until yesterday when I got an error message that kept popping up:

"USB Device not recognized: One of the devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned and windows does not recognize it."

However it appears to be intact. I have also tried plugging directly into wall as opposed to a power strip and I have tried a new usb cable, still no luck. I have removed the drive from the enclosure and connected it thru SATA, however it still reads as 558mb of 558mb available, even though if I go to format it, it tells me it will be the actual size, 465gb. If I was to go ahead and format would I be able to use any recovery programs to recover my files once the disk is formatted? Is this unrecoverable? The disk itself seems to have been damaged in some way or the file system has become corrupted. WD tech support was useless. They only offered to replace the drive and a reduced price. What I want are my files, I can replace the drive myself. I had over 11 years worth of music on it.

Also it shows up in discmgmt as FAT, not FAT32 or NTFS.

 

[FishAk]

First of all, do not forget how you feel right now. Once you recover your data, let right now be a reminder of how important it is to back up your files. If you have a 500Gb drive, you really need to have another 500Gb drive to back up the first. It is cheap, and easy.

There is no need to format your drive to recover the data. One thing you might try- though it's probably a long shot- is to try the disk in another USB enclosure.

Google and download R-Studio. It is free to download and run, but they want $75 or so to get a license that will let you recover files bigger than 64K. Chances are that R-Studio will read your disk, and you can then decide if it's worth while to buy it.

$75 will buy R-Studio, but it would also buy a good 1Tb backup drive. Make sure you do have another drive that will hold the files you recover from the problem drive. Any writing you do to the drive will make recovery that much less trouble free.

 

[RebateMonger]

FishAk's advice is solid. It's possible the SATA-to-USB converter in the WD housing has failed. Or the housing's power supply is failing. You can remove the disk inside and either directly attach it to the SATA bus in a working PC or attach it with a SATA-to-USB converter cable or another USB external housing. Direct attachement will make data recovery much faster if that's necessary.

If the above doesn't allow direct data recovery, you'll want to try some data recovery software, either paid or freeware. R-Studio has a good reputation (although I haven't used it).

And, yeah, backup disks are cheap and data recovery is time-consuming and expensive.

 

[FishAk]

I can speak a little of R-Studio.

I connected my external backup disk to a netbook I have running XP, so I could copy some files to the netbook. The drive had a 800Mb partition that was a TrueCrypt volume, and the other 200Mb was unencrypted. I don't remember exactly what I did, but somehow, the XP machine F'ed the drive, and none of my machines could reccognise the file system. I tried to read it with Recova, but it couldnt make anything out either. I downloaded R-Studio, and it imediatly was able to read all the unencrypted partition. I looked through the files, and opened a couple that were less than 64Kb, and all was fine. I didn't need anything from the disk, and just looked through the files to be sure, so I never actually bought the license, but I'm confident that R-Studio could have recovered the unencrypted partition.

 

[corkyg]

Good advice all the way. I would like to know, however, which 500GB MyBook you have. There are two editions - Essentials and Premium. Reviews on the Essentials model are not great.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

 

[Voo]

First of all, do not forget how you feel right now. Once you recover your data, let right now be a reminder of how important it is to back up your files. If you have a 500Gb drive, you really need to have another 500Gb drive to back up the first. It is cheap, and easy.

And not to forget:
TEST YOUR BACKUP SOLUTION REGULARLY

So many people just backup their data somehow and never think about how they'd restore the data.

 

[mornir]

scanning with R-Studio now, getting alot of badsector messages. How could it be fine one moment and just brick the next? I hadn't moved it in months, no power issues, nothing that could conceivably cause this. It is an Essential model btw.

 

[Russwinters]

The drives they use in externals are "cheaper" even though they may have the same model number as a drive you can buy OEM.


Hard drives are mechanical devices that are mass produced.


They are liable to fail at ANY time. They are the worst possible device to trust with data. Always keep a backup. They WILL often die without any notable cause.


My guess is that one of the heads on this drive has failed, it likely had problems when it left the factory, but VERY minor, and over time it got worse, but only marginally, until one day it hit the threshold and failed completely, or has almost failed completely.



Where you able to get the data you needed?

 

[Campy]

I've had a 500GB mybook die on me aswell. One time it just plonked out and came up as empty. I had to recover all the files to another drive and then reformat it and then it worked fine again. Then it just died completely a year later.
Anyway the program i used in the first scenario was called File Scavenger.