Model Western Digital My Book Premium Edition 320GB External Hard Drive. Software and devices that carry the Works with Windows Vista logo have been.
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Do not be stupid and leave the unit plugged in or plug it in during disassembly. And you are about to void any warranty you may have.Model: WD5000C032Step oneIdentify the corner screw that is painted black.
It is located by the lock hole. Scrape it clean and unscrew it. The two clam shells that form the My Book are very snug.Step twoPut the My Book up on its end, the long rubber feet down. Locate the locking tab (See step four).
It will be visible through the grille. Push locking tab down with screw driver (pink) and insert another (red) to torque the two clam shells apart.
Be gentle, the plastic is soft and chances are it will get marred. Torque the clam shells apart just enough to prevent the tab from locking. Anonymoussaid.Sorry if I bother.After a Firmware Upgrade, my Western Digital Premium Firewire simply stopped working! I'm desperate, I have all my music on it!! More than 1500 Cds Ripped.I don't know what to do.Is there a way to fix it? I just downloaded a damn 'Firmware Upgrade' from Wd site, because Windows Vista continued tio recall a Driver (oxemi or something) but warning me that the driver wasn't a proper one, to be careful installing it.so i Went to Wd site (support) and I founded out there was a sort of driver that fixed Firewire issues.So I did: i installed it, and ofter the installation process My Book simply went off!!
I tried to make it work again but with no results.Tried everything actually. I'm desperate, I need what's in it.
Any suggestion? Thank you very much in advance. Ps Sorry for my bad english, but I'm italian:-)). Said.For desperate guy from Italy with his 150 CDs ripped: Cheers, if the disk does not work after performing firmware upgrade - that is NOT ok, but you had not lost your data!!! The disk INSIDE the case works like a charm. What got screwed was the chip on the 'case' tiny motherboard (black/white box), because the upgrade deleted the firmware and after that it had written error and new firmware was not loaded to that tiny motherboard (I guess they have buggy firmware upgradere). So if are a man of action, you can use your screwdriver and open that case (for example the 320GB version did not have that screw on the case as the one described here) and you can connect your disk via SATA as usual internal HDD.
(The disk inisde the WD Mybook is standard WD Caviar Sata HDD). Anonymoussaid.For those wondering how to get the drive out of the Premium Edition (USB & FIREWIRE), it's not too hard. First, remove the rubber strip from around the whole case (it's what's holding the case together), there's a few areas around the drive that feel like they could rip & WILL, you just have to be extra careful in those areas. Second & Finally, apply a small amount of pressure with a flathead screwdriver, to both the top & bottom of the case (near the front), and the case should just slowly come out without resistance. Follow the rest of the steps on the tutorial, to remove the hard drive. For the 750GB models, it's an WD7500AAKS & will perform at double the speeds internally or in a case with an eSata connector, than in this case. Why would Western Digital cripple their own drives like this?
Anonymoussaid.If you have model # WD5000C032-002, and/or maybe the other newer Mybooks, you just have to push the clips, no drilling or scraping to remove a screw. I opened it with 3 sturdy but thin butter knives. If you're looking at the drive like it's an actual book, and looking at the front cover, tilt it to look at the top, in the bottom left corner in the two line holes you can see the clips. Press both of them, each with a butter knife, then take the 3rd butter knife and start to separate the 'binding' from the rest. But just open it a little bit. Leave the 3rd butter knife wedged in.
Now flip it to look at the bottom (spine still on your left). In the upper left and corner there's two more clips in the line holes.
Press them down and wiggle the case apart. It's not hard. Sadly, my drive doesn't spin and I lost 50 hours of field recordings that I had just transfered (the original tapes were magnetically erased by sitting to close to my monitor).
Then as I was going to back it up, the drive died. I had it less than 1 month. DON'T BUY WESTERN DIGITAL! And if you do have a mybook, PLEASE do yourself a favor and back anything important up to DVD's. From reading all the horror stories, your drive is likely to die also. Anonymoussaid.Hey, I just encountered the firmware flash problem with my MyBook Premium a couple days ago.
Of course, the flash failed and made my drive (enclosure) useless.or so I thought. I just found a thread over at the WD Supports Forums in which somebody claims to have 'resurrected' their drive using a flash utility from Oxi Semiconductor.
The thread is called 'Flashing new BIOS My Book Premium DEAD'. It can be found at: I'm going to attempt resurrection as soon I get home!
Everybody cross their fingers! Anonymoussaid.My 500 gb My Book Essential just (or so I thought) shit the bed after I installed a My Book Essential 2.0 500 gb. Luckily it was no big deal, I had just experienced a conflict between the two drives and when they we're booting up, etc. What I will say, is that I will NEVER buy another one of these drives again, and am going to set up to bring a Drobo into my studio. The My Books have huge problems, as you can see on and review site, and they are a bitch to deal with. This was a backup solution for my studio, and I lost a ton of time.
Said.Ahhh thanx for this so much. My 160 Book stopped workin all of a sudden after pluggin it into my friends laptop (which had Vista). Well it worked just wouldnt read. I looked for a while on how to fix it but never came across anything that worked. I finally decided I was gonna just open it up but at a decent glance and much pulling on it you want get it open or find out how to open it. So yeah after finding this its now working as an internal, and I've got all my files back.
I think this experience with WD has really affected how I feel about purchasing their products again though, tho I'm not sure. Said.Arrrgh I just fried a 500 GB mybook when I plugged in a wrong power cable into it.
I extracted the SATA drive and plugged it in and this horrid smoke smelling of melting circuit board billowed out of the SATA connector i was horrified. I am still in shock because I just backed up everything on this drive 2 months ago and now I no longer have duplicates of the files.
So I am hoping all i have to do is replace the pcb on the drive itself and hopefully it will work correctly. And I don't want to send the drive to a data recovery lab. This sucks its only 3 months old. Anonymoussaid.I have the 1 gig Book2, and what a load of shite the company is, like another twit like me I knocked mine to the floor after catching a cable. When its connected to the pc the drive runs and the leds flash, and the pc acknowledges there is a usb connection but neither read nor write to it, so I guess its the cct board gone, I contacted wd, but they refuse to assist as I bought it while in Europe and as I am at the moment in Asia, they will not accept responsibility for it, otherwords the portable drive does not have portable warranty, What a bundle of shite. Never, ever again will I buy WD.
Anonymoussaid.i bought a mybook 500gb, and everything was all right for a few months, after that i experienced trouble with delayed disc writing or something like that, after that, the drive suddenly went unrecognized for my computer, and after that, the on/off feature stopped working. I turned off the computer, and the case was still on, or when i turn on my computer, the disc was still off. This drive is a piece of crap. I will never buy another drive from WD again. I took it off the case and i hope it still works as an internal hdd. Said.I randomly but frequently kept experiencing a 'Delayed write failure' error with my WD 500gb My book. After googling this problem I decided to try removing the drive from the enclosure and hook it up as an Internal SATA drive, well its been 4 days now and the drive is running flawless plus all of the data was still present when I hooked it up internally.
(Win XP SP3) I guess the usb interface used in these my books is to blame? The thing is I have 2 other external USB drives (Maxtor) and never experienced this delayed write error before with either of them. Its worth noting that although the 500gb my book I have looked exactly the same on the outside vs. The one in this article it wouldnt come apart the same way, I had to break internal tabs to get it open (Which arent even mentioned here other than the 2 tabs visible through the grate) also there was no corner screws on the enclosure as well as other internal differences, I basically had to break it open, WD ensured you'll be voiding the warranty if its opened but for me it was worth it. Anonymoussaid.ok guys i need EMERGENCY HELP, I have a problem, I own a WD 500gb Essential Edition (with the green round light), all of a sudden it started making this 'click' noise.
I tried connecting it to other computers and changed USB cable but it doesnt help anything. The hd starts up, makes the click noise a couple of times, then it goes into a standby mode.
It doesnt even appear on my computer anymore. Any suggestions on what i should, and what i can do in order to retrieve my info stored on it? Anonymoussaid.Good advice, has anybody had a disk recovery done and what the price was, and which location. I'm located in Carson,CA 90745, I would like to recover just about everything on my book approx 250gb (music, pics, docs, apps, videos, etc.). Just of curiosity, on other sites people posted that I should try the freezing method (put drive in ziploc bag, freeze overnight, and then connect to computer) in order to access the book temp in order to move files out of it, has anybody tried this?
Anonymoussaid.I have the same WD. No screws on the outside. Was able to pull the sides away from the middle and pulled it out. That's where my unscrewing began. Okay.here's the problem.
My drive didn't make any strange noise. It just starts and stops when it wants. So I removed it from the old casing and put it into a new external enclosure. It does the same. The drive letter will blank in and out like it wants to stay. Some times it does.
I can see how much data is on it and even go to properties. If it allows me to go into the folder I'll see all the folders that I made inside of it. But when I go in those.Nothing. What should I do?
Anonymoussaid.Thanks for your great explanations even though it didn't help me much. I’m wondering whether someone could help 2 days ago my WD My Book 500GB Essential Edition USB HD stopped working with no reason at all. I was hearing a strange sound when the drive was ‘trying’ to start up and right after that it stopped ‘trying’. I followed the instructions above and opened it, hoping that the problem could be in the caseand I took it to a PC shop cause I just have a laptop, where the guy there told me that the disk head has a problem and that’s why I hear this noise. Bottom line, I spoke with some data recovery companies who ask for a fortune to recover my data, if it’s recoverable Does anyone know if there is a more decent way to find out if there’s any possibility to recover these data without spending these crazy amounts?
I’m not a company loosing millions here, I’m a poor guy loosing some memories from moments that are not reproducible in any way if you know what I mean. Anonymoussaid.Thanks for this highly detailed crash course on opening a MyBook Essential! Although I didn't had to make it to the end (just a ratteling screw in the inside that mysteriously came lose a few months ago), it was pretty easy with the pictures.
Here's a 320GB IDE-version (first version, with the button as seen on the pictures). Anyone yet tried putting a bigger disk inside? I use it just for music and sound scapes, but it's getting to small for what I've got.
(And since a single HDD is cheaper for a student than one with casing.) No trouble what so ever with this drive, even after two years. By now I also have a 1TB drive (with FW800, woohoo, now only find an affordable PCI card for my pc), my father has a 500GB Pro drive and the office has a 500GB Pro as back-up. No trouble what so ever on Windows XP systems.
Keep up the good work! Anonymoussaid.Hey guys, I did something really dumb last night, I accidentally plugged my WD MyBook home premium edition into my laptops power adapter (T.T). I heard some strange noise, so I quickly unplugged it. I didn't experience any strange smells or see any smoke, but I think I short circuited something, as it no longer works and the LED in the front just flickers if I plug it back in. I would like to know if, in your experience, it probably just fried some circuitry in the case (and the actually hard disk is probably ok) or if there is a good chance I also trashed the actual disk component. Im still under warranty, but the data is very important to me, so I didn't know if I should try and take it apart to place into an external case or not.
Thanks for your time! Anonymoussaid.This is insanity. I have the WD 320GB Essential Mybook that is only 4 months old.
I had about 200GB stored on it and I woke up this morning and I had the dreaded delay write error. The drive still had a drive letter but when I clicked it it just hung my system up.
I unplugged the USB and plugged it back in. XP detected the USB drivers, and even that it was WD MyBook. The drive would not be recognized from windows at all.
I needed the data off of it more than a RMA replacement so I googled, found this site, and got the drive out. Plugged it into my PC via SATA and still nothing. I have had the BIOS actually detect the drive but now it is showing up as 'unknown'. This is rediculous that WD is having literally hundreds of problems with this one product. I am going to try the freezer trick tonight because I have had success with that before. I used to buy WD exclusively but after reading these various problems and the volume of them I will stick with Seagate (which I have a 160GB hard drive that is 4 years old still kicking) and maxtor.
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Just thought I'd post my experience. Anonymoussaid.This post has been very informative, however, I'm still at a loss to what I should do. My problem is the same as kelstar's (the looping).
I have a 500G MyBook (WD5000DO32) and two more days on my warranty. The files on the drive are all backups and I still have the originals.
I would be willing to return it for a new one but I have files on this drive that I would not want anyone else to have access to if the drive is still good. I don't think my older Dell PC will handle the 500G drive internally and I don't understand what kelstar did (external SATA to USB cable set to bypass the little controller board). Can anyone give me a suggestion on how to erase the files before I return it or what else I can do? I can be emailed at [email protected] and I will be checking this post. Thank you for any help! Said.Hi Anonymous: The Serial ATA (SATA) to USB connector that i used at my work was similar to this: If you are just looking for something to wipe your old drive, here are some free options from download.com: Be sure to check out what each one does and read comments from people that have used it.
You don't want any surprises when wiping disk(s).:). Anonymoussaid.Thanks for the opening instructions. I would have had to break the case open instead - not that it would make a difference as I think the USB interface is defective. The drive works perfectly connected by SATA directly. It started to show read errors (actually 'inpage errors' and 'device I/O errors') in the last week.
As the drive was still hotter after all that opening procedure (INCLUDING finding this page!) than the other drives inside the computer case, I assume the WD case has a temperature problem that either destroys the drive or the USB interface PCB after some time (was 18 months old in my case). So: even if your drive is running, CHECK THE TEMPERATURE if you have a way. Or use it only a short time, then remove it. Said.Kelstar, I tried this but it wont let me assign drive letter because it is labelled an 'unknown partition'. I deleted the two smaller partitions and was able to format and assign drive letter to a small segment of unallocated space on the drive, but the roughly 500K portion of the disk, presumably where my files is, remains 'unknown'. Would you advise using another disk utility to try to mount this drive'?
I am also considering using Knoppix, which usually is able to mount NTFS partitions. Said.I spent last night trying to remove the two x hard drives from a dead Mybook 1 TB (I think it was called the Pro - it was replaced by WD but, then, failed again with the flashing light symptoms). Try as I might, I can't get the drives out of the last bit of casing - there's a lot of blue plastic and the eight screws (four each side) which you'd expect would free the drives, don't. Short of getting a pair of heavy duty wire cutters to get through the final lump of casing, does anyone have any ideas of how to get the drives out? This would have been a fat lot of use as a RAID if you can't even get inside the thing to swap out a failed drive. Getting the rest of the thing apart was pretty easy - and it wasn't the same as the documented, pictorial example given here. A couple of screw-drivers and a bit of patience was all that was needed.
If all else fails, I can probably run the drives as they are as the connectors are now exposed but I'd like to get them out. Said.Well, after some pain and angst, problem finally solved. After removing the 500G drive, I was able to install it internally using a SATA cable.
Windows, of course, would only recognize the large partition (there were two smaller ones) as 'unknown partition' and would not assign a drive letter. So, I downloaded Knoppix 5.1, burned to CD, then booted computer into Knoppix. If you havent used Knoppix before, you may want to look into it. It was able to find and mount the large partition (dev/sdc1). When you boot Konqueror, a file browser, with root access (at command line enter su, then konqueror) you have full access to the drive.
I then purchased a 1TB Seagate (not/not WD) USB drive, which mounted easily in Knoppix, and copied all contents to the USB drive. My wife is now happy as a clam, I have earned my keep as her CTO, and learned yet another lesson about how to back up a small business. Said.Hi Rich, I have a question for you. I have a WD My Book 500 gb, wd5000c032-002 with a USB2 output. I have an old Mac Titanium and it only has USB and Firewire. My bright idea was to use a converter to go from USB2 to Firewire in the Mac to try and increase my speed to the WD. When I tried it the first time, the drive would come on, but the light would not turn on nor mount.
I tried this on a PC and Mac and neither worked. There was no electrical burn smell. The first time.
I tried it again and this time, I SAW smoke coming out of the HD. It worked fine until I tried to use the converter adapters in it. The convert I used was one of those universal swap the end travel type. I have burned something up and pray that it was just the power supply. But if the drive would power up but not mount, I am afraid I lost my drive and info. Your opinion please sir. Thanks, Marshall Hoyle.
Said.Hi, I have a mybook 500Gb External hard drive - as above, it's only flashing after my daughter plugged her laptop into it. I Bought another one, and swapped over the internal PCB to see if I could recover the data - It wouldn't work, so I don't know if I've fried something deeper - there's another PCB inside the HDD outer cover. My question is: How can I connect this as an internal slave drive?
Which cable will fit to it, as a SATA cable doesn't look like it would fit onto the bit where the PCB attached. It's more of a blade fitting than needle/hole fitting.
Are ther different cables available for this type. It is different from a normal internal HD cable fitting isn't it? Said.Well, good news for all those that want to remove or replace the harddisk for whatever reason from the higher-end 'My Book Premium ES Edition 500GB'. It's really easy! It has ESATA + USB2. I purchased it for a low price figuring I could remove the 500gb disk inside, replace for a 1TB and get a free external ESATA housing effectively, after selling the 500gb original disk.
It turns out WD made some major design changes, to simplify things. 1) Only a rubber strip and some plastic 'clicky' things holding everything in place 2) No screw! 3) The LED-on/off switch, when undone from its 3 screws (1 big, 2 tiny btw) just floats around on it's very long flatcable, no longer connected with pins. 4) On the inside, you simply remove the 4 'top' screws holding the entire metal construction to the plastic. 5) Remove the 4 screws connecting the harddisk sideways to the rubber pads. These screws have the odd 'metal spider' or spring-system connected to them.
6) Remove sata-power-combo connector 7) replace harddisk & repeate inverted! I did it in about 10 minutes time, taking it easy.really no swet. The only thing I dislike is getting the rubber edge back between the outer and inner housing. But you can do without, if you want to;). Anonymoussaid.this ruled - thanks for the info. A couple notes of what I ran into: first, the screw was located under the rubber foot.not a big deal, and your picture showed me where it was. Second, there were some set screws (4) that attached the drive to the plastic clamshell.
So no amount of wiggling would have freed it - but the screws were easy to see, and easy to remove. Once gone, the case came right off. Otherwise, your instructions were note perfect.and screw the warranty, Westrn Digital licks balls.
This thing is about a year and a half old, and the enclosure ran hot as hell all the time. I am not positive, but have faith my data is fine - the I/O error i got is almost surely an enclosure failure. But this post gave me the stones to pull it apart, and man, I am glad I did. Thanks so much for this. Said.Hi, I found your blog while looking for answers on how to revive my WD My Book Essentials 1TB.and you seem to be of more help than the WD Support. Anyways, I just recently bought a WD My Book Essentials 1 TB (last Jan.
7, 2009 to be exact). I was able to back up all my files. It works just fine.until I reformatted my computer this week.
My external drive is no longer recognized by my computer, and doesn't show up in the 'Disk Management' at all. All my other USB devices (My Passport, flash disks, PSP) are being recognized. I tried using different power cord (and plugged it on a wall outlet like they said), tried using different USB cords, but to no avail. I'm nearing to getting it open (with the help of your instructions). But I would like to know (if you know) what the steady bottom light means? Do you think it's dead already.and that I should get my money back from the shop where I bought it.
I'd rather get my files back (all 700+ gig of them) than get the money back. I hope you can help because those files are my life's work.I'm getting desperate because I couldn't get any support from the WD support!:p.I'm gonna bust in tears anytime soon! Anonymoussaid.Just in case people are still running across this very helpful page when their WD My Book fails (as I did), here's another angle. Like someone above, I had a hunch that the problem was a failed power supply.
Even though the blue light would come on, the drive would never really get going. When I applied power to it, it would just make a 'click-click-click' sound like the drive was trying to spin but didn't have enough juice. So I pulled the case apart and bought a SATA-compatible HDD case from Staples for $50. Probably could have found one cheaper if I weren't so impatient.
Anyway, after peeling away some more of the foil wrap at the power supply side of the drive to expose an additional connector (for power), I slapped it into the new case which had SATA data and power connectors built in. Closed up the case, connected it to my computer and powered it up. The drive works like a champ and all my files are intact. Anonymoussaid.For as many of you who have had failures, you'd think this was a bad design or run of hard drives. I guess I am a 'rare' success story. I have 7 500GB MyBooks (black) and 5 1TB MyBooks (silver) and not a single failure knocking on wood. The black ones were all bought from NewEgg as new and the silver ones were all from Office Depot as new.
I built a 'home grown' tray for my drives and I just slide them in like a removal, hot swap, RAID drive. I built a single, hi amp, power supply to power the whole tray so I don't have to chew up 5 (per tray) power plugs. System works great.
I like the MyBooks for their uniform size and connector layout. Said.I just ended my battle with a Mybook 500GB premium as the firewire stopped working, said the device would not start. I tried the USB and got it to recognize the drive but was getting I/O errors and things were behaving odd.
Checked my warranty and that was expired. So rip it apart.The drive was hot, and it being warmer now I can only assume that had something to do with it. I hooked the drive to another USB/SATA interface (cheapy) and got the same I/O error. Well I was using the same little SATA cable that was int he case.
A different sata cable fixed the problem. So that was the whole problem there. The little red sata cable must have failed probably because of heat.you can replace that cable and reassemble, but too bad that rubber moulding wont go back in right.thanks for the guide. This is my first WD problem. And at least the drive is ok.
AWWFUL Product - Never Again!said.The WD5000KS drive in my WD5000C032 (500Gb USB MyBook) died after 2.5yrs. In reality, the MyBook probably had less than 100 hours on it. Although the drive has a 3 year warranty if purchased bare/retail, it inherits the measily MyBook warranty.As I cracked open the MyBook to replace the drive, following the instructions here (THX!), I couldn't help but think how OVER-ENGINEERED is this product. You can buy an enclosure that has an easy drive installation procedure for $30-50.ALL in all, you are better off buying a bare drive and an off the shelf enclosure. NEVER will I purchase a WD product again! Anonymoussaid.My Book Essential Edition 2.0WD10000H1U = number on case.Hp Pavilion Vista X64 HP SP1STATUS = Solid Blue Lights, Windows lables it as an unknown device.NOTE: I WILL NEVER F!@#ING BUYFROM WESTERN DIGITAL AGAIN.QUESTION: What usb drivers are supposed to be loaded with Vistax64 and a MY BOOK 1TB.This thing is a few months old.I used it to recover data from a corrupted OS configuration.
Im so pissed. I'm going to see what WDand Bust Buy will do without having to pay a GEEKtard. IF I LOOSE MY DATA I WILL FREAKING KILL SOMETHING. I think I'll end up tearing it apart and removing the HD.To all those with the same Piece Of Shit WD MY BOOK.
I feel your pain. Anonymoussaid.Can't believe you guys are having so many problems with these WD drives. It's gotta be Windoze. I've been running the hell out of a 1TB Studio Edition I for years.
Mounts-unmounts, no problems. Also a 1TB Home Edition II, works just fine.
2 WD 500 GB drives in my G5 dual 1.8 GHz Tower, added PCI cards for more FireWire 400 & 800 externals & optical drives. 17 hub ports for USB toys. (Never would I insult a Hard Drive by crippling it with USB).It's not WD brand that's bad. It's your clueless OS.Not meant to be a slap, but that's the facts. Ri-Qsaid.Hi there. I bought the MyBook Essential 1 TB (new model with the capacity gauge) about 2 months ago.
And the damn thing just suddenly goes undetected a few days ago, following a power outage 2 days before. And now everytime I connect it, the WD Smartware Virtual CD loads straightaway, but the partition took maybe 10 minutes or more to be detected. But I still can't access it because the system just freezes and I can't do anything unless I unplug it. I test it on Mac OS and Windows7 with the same problem.And so I need to pry it open. And I stumble across this site. The problem is that holes at the top, back, bottom surface is different from the old one.I have a 750 GB worth of data in there.
Please help me disassemble it without damaging the casing. Can somebody help me?Thanks for your time. Said.Has anyone stuck a larger drive than was originally supplied back into one of these WD MyBook units?I.E. I have a 500GB unit and the drive has gone flaky (bad sectors etc.) I was going to buy another (larger) drive, probably 1TB, and stick it in there, but when I spoke to WD support they said the Mybook would only recognize the size of drive it originally came with.
I know that's not accurate as I have put a smaller drive in with no problem (they were surprised it worked), but I don't have a larger drive to test out my theory. Anonymoussaid.My WD MyBook 1.5 TB that I use to backup my data started randomly turning itself off. The only way to get it back on was to unplug the power and the firewire and then reboot Windows. The new enclosure is much easier to open.
You just have the two tabs and then 2 screws once your get inside. I put the drive inside my computer and it seems to be ok. Hopefully the drive is not damaged but reading these comments doesn't give me much confidence for the future. I now have 3 of these 1.5TB drives inside my computer and I'm waiting for them to fail. Thankfully I backup my data daily.
It seems that every drive above 1TB has reliability problems not just WD. Said.To restore a difficult drive that was corrupted can turn out to be simple if you have software program which will help you recover all of your deleted documents. You most likely gave up individuals documents as becoming lost forever. But whatever the kind of documents they're, a great application ought to recover them - data documents, audios, videos, image documents and zip documents and emails are all within the scope.Regardless of whether you've lost your documents simply because of hardware or software program failure or computer virus or just by becoming clumsy you are able to have them back.
It should be an all round recovery application that could be part of file safety strategy for professionals like network staff and house users alike. Is really care about you Desktop as a person do for your young children. Anonymoussaid.Model WD5000G032: no blue light anymore, out of warranty, no computer recognizes drive.Followed instructions here, connected the SATA drive directly to my computer and I can see the actual drive in windows under computer management, but it shows it's not initialized. I understand these drives are formatted for Linux, and tried using a driver I found in this thread.
(this is what is was: also tried using Easeus Drive Recovery Program, and it sees the drive, but searches for files and partitions forever (like 24 hours continuous) with no luck.Does this mean that maybe in my case the actual drive is fried? Or is there something else I could try (or am not doing properly) and maybe the data is still there somewhere? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Anonymoussaid.These disks are extremely robust but they are prone to issues if they are connected/disconnected regularly.if your own PC states it cant access it, but can see it then run a CHKDSK against your C: and then against the external driveIf your own PC cant detect it then plug it into a different PC and scan it via this PCOr, if when you plug the disk in it allocates e.g drive E: then unplug your disk and plug a USB stick in and allocate the same letter. Issue a CHKDSK command for later (reboot), swap the USB stick for the external drive and reboot the computerYou usually find all issues with these drives can be solved via CHKDSK.you dont need to take them apart! I have several of these disks and every time I have solved the issue using the aboveRgdsBrett. Anonymoussaid.Started having problems with my WD My Book 500GB unit.
Green light flashing and the drive not showing on the list of available drives.Followed the advise on opening the case.thank you!I have the older IDE variety of HDD. Luckily I saved my old PC with the IDE mother board connections!Hooked it up and it worked.for a short while then it heated up it stop working or being recognized by the PC.I did not see it written in here but what I did was take the HDD and place it into a freezer for about an hour. Took it out and connected it up and the PC found it and I was able to get some data off of it before it heated back up. It seems that disk warped and it stops it from spinning properly from what I understand. Freezing the HDD allows the disk to spin freely and you get a short window to recover your data.Hope this helps some of you out! Said.I have a similar problem with MyBook home 1T, as the warranty expired I opened it and found the disk was SATA.When connecting it directly on the motherboard or to another converter SATA-to-USB Windows report the disk is uninitialized and the disk is unallocated and I should format it.If I use the PCB card (converter SATA-toUSB) that MyBook was connected, I can see the contents of the disk but cannot access them. Cannot even navigate inside the disk.Tried different OS (Windows, Mac & Linux) with similar behavior.Any idea so that I will not loose my data?thank youiosif.
Alan Odbodsaid.I would just like to show some support for these WD essential drives as so many comments here are negative. I have had a total of 5 (3x500Gb, 1x1TB and 1x2TB). The first I bought maybe 3+ years ago I think, it was certainly expensive then anyway.
2 of the 500Gb have been replaced by the bigger models and removed from their cases in similiar fashion to this thread. All 5 are working just fine and are usually on 12 hours in a day average. The only problem I have ever had was with the acronis software that came with the 2TB device for ' Aligning' the formated drive. It never worked and caused the drive to respond incredibly slowly and slowed the boot of the machine to a couple of hours.
That was sorted by using win7 to format it. So maybe I'm lucky but hardware wise I can not fault any of my WD essentials and will probably buy the next big one when required. Great article. Anonymoussaid.I'm glad to know that there are others out there that concur that this 500 GB My Book is a piece of shit. I went through many miserable months with it freezing, requiring a reboot, or not being recognized at all.
It is junk, and WD should be ashamed for not having a recall. My solving the problem by taking the hard drive out of the shitty case, throwing the case away and installing it into my computer as an internal drive and it works fine now - so far. Worse piece of crap I've ever run across.
Said.My USB just pushed itself into the casing as I pulled out the USB cord. I had the my Hard Drive on my chair and fell on my floor when I pulled my Laptop and tugged it down. I didn't realize it broke off the USB receiving part until a few hours later. Hopefully your instructions will be help to get my casing off, but can you answer that the data on hard drive be able to be retrieved if I can get the hard drive out and into a new casing, or new USB piece of hardware? Hopefully I can fix this. Thanks for your input if anyone can let me know. Mikesaid.Nice descriptions and info.I've been relatively happy with my 2 WD MyBooks.both are the 500GB Legacy models.
Both purchased in around 2005-2006. Recently, one started giving my trouble, so I did some searching and ended up hear.I'm pretty sure my drive is just fine, and that the enclosure is causeing a problem.I'll have to disassemble to see. Recently though, one 'sort of' stopped working.see, when I plugged it in to power, and the connected the USB cable to the pc/laptop, the enclosure would power up (like normal), and I could hear the drive start to 'spin up', but, it would never seem to make it through the entire 'spin up' process.and the drive would start clicking.
A different clicking than the dreaded click of death. So, I left the drive powered on for a while to see what would happen, and EVENTUALLY, I heard the drive 'finish' the 'spin up'. Then I was able to connect via USB and access my data. I ran WD Diagnostics on the drive, and the diags said everything was fine. But, next time my drive was powered off for an extended period of time, it took even longer to 'spin up'.
But, it did come back to life again, and data accessible. I'm going to have to dismantle the thing and see what happens.sounds very reasonable.
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January 2023
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