Western Digital USB Drive just stopped spinning while in use

[Rainsford]

Just got an 80 gig USB WD hard drive for my birthday about 1 month ago. It seemed to work fine since I got it, and during the entire month it sat on my desk, no moving it around, being hard on it, etc, etc. Today, while I was watching a movie off of the drive, my player froze, the hard drive activity light went on solid, and I couldn't get to anything on the drive.

I unplugged the power and plugged it back in, and I didn't hear or feel anything. I placed my hand on the case, and usually I can feel it spin up, but nothing this time. I figure I'm boned, but I take the drive apart and take out the actual drive from inside the external case. Since it's just a regular IDE WD hard drive, I plug it into my desktop to give it a whirl...nothing. No spin, not detected by the BIOS. I tried a few things, it's sitting in the freezer at the moment, so I'll see if that trick works or not.

Like the big dumbass I am, I didn't expect a brand new piece of equipment to fail, so I didn't have any backups of the data. It's nothing I can't replace eventually, but I'm really wondering what the hell happened. I've heard of no spin-ups with really old drives that ran 24/7, were shut off and then started up again, but this drive was brand new and running when it happened.

Any thoughts on what happened or how I could possibly fix it? Thanks, any help would be appreciated.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

it died..

how I could possibly fix it

WD's RMA process is kinda slow but that would be best course of action..gl (WD 60GB turnaround time 3 weeks)

 

[magomago]

lets just hope you didn't void the warranty by taking it out of the case


and sorry about your data >< my condolences for your lots bytes

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
it died..

how I could possibly fix it

WD's RMA process is kinda slow but that would be best course of action..gl (WD 60GB turnaround time 3 weeks)

I'd rather just eat the loss, even if it is still under warrenty. Any other part on a computer can fail and be replaced with only a little downtime, but data loss can cause much larger problems. So...I don't really feel like trusting my data to a company that I've had bad luck with.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: magomago
lets just hope you didn't void the warranty by taking it out of the case


and sorry about your data >< my condolences for your lots bytes

I probably did. But it seemed worth it on the off chance I could get my data back, it seems pretty retarded to me you can't remove it from the USB housing since the basic drive is what I'd get with an internal drive anyways. I still might try to RMA it, but as I said above...do I really WANT to use a WD again?

 

[DeeKnow]

wow... didnt think a drive can die mid-spin

 

[Polishwonder74]

I feel you man, I just had a brand new (3 days old) SATA Maxtor die on me as I was transferring data from my old drives to this new one. If I can't revive it, I'll lose the 70GB of data that I moved onto it before it fizzled out. SONOFABITCH!!!!

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: magomago
lets just hope you didn't void the warranty by taking it out of the case


and sorry about your data >< my condolences for your lots bytes

I probably did. But it seemed worth it on the off chance I could get my data back, it seems pretty retarded to me you can't remove it from the USB housing since the basic drive is what I'd get with an internal drive anyways. I still might try to RMA it, but as I said above...do I really WANT to use a WD again?

There's always the FS/T section for those who do still use WD drives. 🙂

Enter the drive's serial and model information in the warranty form at WD's website; that'll tell you if it's under warranty. Maybe they don't even keep records of what drives are and are not used in enclosures.