Thread: Is my External HDD ruined?

I have a My Book Essential 1TB External. I'm on Windows 7 x64. After I updated I've been getting a lot of bugs and extreme lag. I would click on the drive in My Computer, enter my HD password and the drive would open up with all my folders, etc. But then when I wanted to drag folders from my External onto my PC hard drive it would freeze up and automatically quit? Windows would no longer show the External as attached to my computer. No matter how many times I click on the icon in the task bar for WD SmartWare, it will never come back up. I have to restart my PC everytime so I can renter the External. I then installed all WD software from the Control Panel, didn't change anything or help at all.

I have no clue what to do or what has happened, but my External HD is pretty much useless right now. I have very important files on there, I need to get access to this immediately.

Please help!


EDIT: Now my PC has trouble recognizing the External. I tried it on my Laptop also, it doesn't show anything. It shows up under disk management sometimes. For example it'll show up then simply disappear.

Finally after restarting my PC a bunch of times and switching USB ports back and forth, this CD DRIVE E: icon appeared for the WD UNLOCKER. Whenever I try and double click on it to open it up, the green bar appears to load as seen below, then the icon just disappears, it will not open anything.




When the "CD Drive (E:\) WD Unlocker appears like above, my external HD will briefly appear under DISK MANAGEMENT. It shows up then just goes away along with the E:\ drive icon. I don't know if the USB cable that connects the External to my PC is bad or not? My external was working an hour before all this happened, so I don't understand what is happening?

Also, when I click on "Devices and Printers", an icon appears with "My Book 1130". This is what is shows.






My External does light up when plugged into my PC and turns off when removed. I can hear a ticking sound which sounds like the HD working? All these problems seemed to start after I updated to WD SmartWare 1.5.1.6. I even unistalled all the WD software. For some reason whenever I try to install "WDSmartWare_Software_Upgrader_for_Windows_1.5.1.6 " it just sits there and hangs, doesn't do anything.

So you have a password on your HDD. Did you try to remove in from the drive? also if it all worked ok on the older version of your program remove any newer version and install only the one that was working.

It may be possible that the drive is good, but the cable, or connectors are bad. In this case, you can take apart the mybook case, and remove the drive and connect it either internally, or with an adapter. I had a mybook case go bad once, and was able to reuse it it by following some direction off the net..:P In my opinion I would do this if you cannot find any other way to make it work, since you need the data.

How to Open a Western Digital MyBook USB Drive.
NewerTech U3NVSPATA Universal Drive Adapter USB... in stock at OWC
NewerTech NWTFWU3ES2HDK Voyager Q- Quad Interface... in stock at OWC

I am sure you can find the stuff on amazon or whatever as well.

Originally Posted by specialized

So you have a password on your HDD. Did you try to remove in from the drive? also if it all worked ok on the older version of your program remove any newer version and install only the one that was working.

I do have a password on my External hard drive. I dont know how to remove it, but I dont think it matters because when I plug my External HD into my PC, it doesn't even recognize it. I also removed all Western Digital software, but it did not help at all. Is there a way to remove all drivers from my PC? When I try to download the software from the official site, it will not install for me, it just sits there and lags, usually get a "Not Responding" message and have Ctrl Alt Delete out of it.

I mean it just worked a few hours ago. The External HD power supply was hooked up to a power surge strip, if that's what you call it. I did accidentally knock the plug out of the wall, my PC and everything else shut off. I don't know if I ruined the USB cord that you use to connect your External HD to your PC or if something else is fried. I did try and hook it up to my Laptop as it did work before on that. It would not show up on my Laptop either.

I'm just very frustrated, as I have a lot of important photos on there. All I can do it call WD tomorrow and pray that they can fix this and can tell me something that I already haven't tried.

---------- Post added at 01:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:28 AM ----------

Originally Posted by SteadySeed

It may be possible that the drive is good, but the cable, or connectors are bad. In this case, you can take apart the mybook case, and remove the drive and connect it either internally, or with an adapter. I had a mybook case go bad once, and was able to reuse it it by following some direction off the net..:P In my opinion I would do this if you cannot find any other way to make it work, since you need the data.

How to Open a Western Digital MyBook USB Drive.
NewerTech U3NVSPATA Universal Drive Adapter USB... in stock at OWC
NewerTech NWTFWU3ES2HDK Voyager Q- Quad Interface... in stock at OWC

I am sure you can find the stuff on amazon or whatever as well.

So your saying actually remove the hard drive from the case and plug it into my PC? I tried looking at the links you posted but I dont fully understand.

Yes, you can take apart the mybook case an inside is an actual drive. Its a regular drive, that can be installed like normal internally,(inside your computer) or using the adapters I posted. I have the first adapter I listed, it works great. you may even be able to repair the case, or purchase a new case for it if you would like. That same website I listed sells cases as well, and I know I have seen them elsewhere.

Of course if it is the drive that is bad, then you are looking at data recovery, and as far as that goes, I got nothing for you, sorry. But at least you have the drive already disassembled.

That will be my last option, taking the thing apart. If I do open it I void my warrant which I currently do have. Hopefully I can get a hold of them tomorrow. If anyone else can help please feel free to post, maybe someone has gone through the same problem.

Yeah, I had a 2tb external for my ps3 and it started to act exactly like you have described until one day it completely stopped working and gave me the hard drive click of death, so to speak!

And honestly i was only a couple of Gb's away from filling it. It was the only time in my life where the anger hit me so hard i didn't even know what to do and i just sat there for an hour until i got over it. Usually there would be a lot of flying objects around that time!

My advice is to try and get that thing to read one more time and save anything you want to keep 'cause its gonna disappear!

Originally Posted by Consciousness

Yeah, I had a 2tb external for my ps3 and it started to act exactly like you have described until one day it completely stopped working and gave me the hard drive click of death, so to speak!

And honestly i was only a couple of Gb's away from filling it. It was the only time in my life where the anger hit me so hard i didn't even know what to do and i just sat there for an hour until i got over it. Usually there would be a lot of flying objects around that time!

My advice is to try and get that thing to read one more time and save anything you want to keep 'cause its gonna disappear!

WOW, I did not want to hear that! Really bad news. I only used about 500GB out of 1TB and it's only a few month old. So I don't understand how it could "die" that quickly? I have all of my sons photos on here, I bought this External to backup my PC and in case my PC got filled, I could delete from there and just put everything on my external. I never thought it was be necessary to backup my External too? Who says to themselves that "I have to backup the backup of my PC hard drive"? I got to somehow find someone or a PC store that could maybe salvage my HD? All I know that it is pretty damn expensive, unless there is some kind of software out there that I could download from a tracker?

The clicking sound you mentioned, does it happen for as long as the drive is plugged in, or only on start-up?

As for taking it apart. That would only be feasible if you think your USB connector is broken, and not the hard drive itself. If you do go this route, you will need two things to plug it into your computer:

1) A SATA interface cable (will need to purchase)

2) A SATA power cable (you will either need to purchase this separately, or, if your computer is new enough, will have come with it. Do note though that if your computer is a bit older than 2-3 years, your computer may be using MOLEX cables to read your hard drive, in which case you will need to buy a SATA cable and an adapter)

Plug both into your external hard drive after you've extracted it, then #1 into your motherboard and #2 in to your power supply.

But the easiest route, at least I think so, is that because this happened after you upgraded (I don't know what you upgraded exactly, your drivers or OS?), simply do either a system restore, system recovery, or a fresh install of your OS