The mystery of the missing WD Green

[TourGuide]

Hello All,

I have a 2 TB Western Digital Green that has gone from working fine on my P67 to missing in windows.

Here is what happened:

1. Another green took a dump in another box here at the house, so I removed the 2 TB unit from my machine (was working fine and recognized by this P67 board) to perhaps replace the belly up unit elsewhere.

2. Plugged it into a P55 board, and the board would not acknowledge it as being present on the system. So FINE - I'll just put it back in the original box where it belongs as my backup.

3. Plug it back in, and the BIOS sees it fine, but Win 7 does not seem to know it exists at all now.

I have tried:

1. Tried swapping cables. (same)

2. Tried moving it to another SATA channel. (same)

3. WD diagnostic tools for Win, but it does not see the drive.

4. I tried to CD version for DOS, but get a boot error and cannot get it to load.

5. Verified through all of this that it has power and a working data connection. (I can feel the drive spin up at power-up)

6. Tried going into disk management and refreshing the drive view, but it does not show up regardless of whether BIOS sees it or not.


Any ideas would be appreciated before I dump this thing.

 

[taltamir]

Boot up a live linux distro and see if it detects it.

My guess is that the P55 board has an electrical issue on the SATA plug that burns out any drive plugged into that specific chanel (I have seen that defect before) which ruined your drive when it was plugged into it for testing.

 

[Coup27]

Boot up a live linux distro and see if it detects it.

This, before pursuing any other avenue.

 

[TourGuide]

You guys got any good recommendations for distros that will work on this P67? I tried a couple and can't get them to boot through to either a shell or a gui.

 

[Coup27]

It doesn't have to be a full on distro, could be GParted instead.

You can get a burnable ISO or theres some simple instructions to make a bootable USB from it as well.

GParted will also give you basic information about the partitions and if theres anything obviously wrong.

 

[TourGuide]

OK - GParted was a good suggestion, but it looks like the 2TB green is dead. It does not show up in Linux in spite of being recognized at boot in the BIOS.

So am I right in blaming the P55 mobo here for frying my original disk and the replacement green?

 

[razel]

BIOS sees it, Windows Disk Management doesn't see it as disk hardware at all. It's time to try WD's Data Lifeguard Diag for DOS.

 

[TourGuide]

BIOS sees it, Windows Disk Management doesn't see it as disk hardware at all. It's time to try WD's Data Lifeguard Diag for DOS.

Yes, this I have tried, but cannot get Data Lifeguard to boot. I have burned a couple of different CDs thinking the first was bad. The second I verified so I am fairly sure I've got a good copy. What happens is I either get a program error and it never boots to the interface, or I just get a black screen - nothing.

 

[Coup27]

Does it boot without the troublesome drive connected?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Do you have a docking station that you could plug it into? I've had dying drives that couldn't be seen any other way except by inserting them into a docking station.

 

[TourGuide]

Does it boot without the troublesome drive connected?

Hmm, no it doesn't, but then I have the same problem with the P55 board too.

Anyone try out the P67 with Western Digital DOS diagnostics? I can't get my copy to boot, with either the P67 or P55 boards I've got.

I'm stumped.

Do you have a docking station that you could plug it into? I've had dying drives that couldn't be seen any other way except by inserting them into a docking station.

Don't have a docking station. I guess I need to grab one.