WD My Book Essential Data Recovery HELP!!!

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chuckylefrek

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Jan 19, 2014
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I have a 2TB My Book Essential USB 2/3 External Hard Drive. The drive stopped working (no light and not recognised in BIOS or Windows) so I took the drive out of the enclosure and put it inside my desktop PC using a SATA cable. I can now see the drive in BIOS and in Windows under disk manager it appears as unallocated.

My research suggests the problem is there is hardware encryption on a small interface board that was attached to the drive inside the enclosure. I assume this board is dead so I do not know how I can recover my data. I have 1.5 TB of family photos on there so I am rather keen to recover these or years of memories will be lost forever.

So I am asking what by best options are:

The best possible solution I have come up with is to buy an identical drive (Not a cheap solution - though I am sure a lot cheaper than data recovery companies) and try and put my drive into the enclosure of this other drive.

Anyone have any experience of this issue and can offer any advice.

I have read that WD will not fix the drive and instead just send out a new unit. The unit is probably still under warranty but I am concerned about the data not a replacement drive.

Thanks in advance

 
Solution
DSzymborski
Generally speaking, when I've had hard drives that aren't completely messed up physically, I've gotten good results from using Recuva to get as much as possible off the borked hard drive.

If software solutions don't work, your likely only option is the very expensive -- and frequently unsuccessful - prospect of sending the drive off to data recovery.

Hopefully your lesson won't be too tough and you'll be able to recover most of your stuff, but do take this as a warning to take better care of your important data in the future. If the loss of a file is devastating for you, it should be backed up in multiple locations and/or multiple formats. Hard drives fail and those failures are frequently of the type that will remove your access to...
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Phillip Corcoran

Phillip Corcoran

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Sep 7, 2013
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That small interface board you referred to is just a bridge chip which all external hard drives have, it handles the data interface conversion from SATA to USB.

I suggest you test the drive with WD's diagnostic software:

Data LifeGuard Diagnostic for Windows: http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=307&sid=3&lang=en

Ignore the drive shown on the download page. The software can be used to test any WD drive.
 
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DSzymborski

DSzymborski

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Nov 19, 2010
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Generally speaking, when I've had hard drives that aren't completely messed up physically, I've gotten good results from using Recuva to get as much as possible off the borked hard drive.

If software solutions don't work, your likely only option is the very expensive -- and frequently unsuccessful - prospect of sending the drive off to data recovery.

Hopefully your lesson won't be too tough and you'll be able to recover most of your stuff, but do take this as a warning to take better care of your important data in the future. If the loss of a file is devastating for you, it should be backed up in multiple locations and/or multiple formats. Hard drives fail and those failures are frequently of the type that will remove your access to what's on the hard drive forever.
 
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Solution
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dezbat

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Oct 7, 2014
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Hi there — I had a similar situation.

4Tb WD My Book studio suddenly conked out, totally unresponsive.

I tested alternative power supply - - wasn't the PSU.

WD were suggesting I send them back the drive or use a data recovery service; both of these suggestions seemed unnecessarily long-winded and potentially very expensive, I just wanted to figure out whether the drive or the enclosure was at fault! Should be a simple set of tests, but of course as soon as you open the case the warranty is void, and they offer no meaningful diagnostics through their support.

I took the plunge, voided the warranty and took the drive out - -seemed to power up fine, but wouldn't read correctly when placed into a MacPro drive bay or using a drive adapter.

Then I read this thread and ordered an identical WD My Studio drive, and placed the drive from my non-responsive WD My Studio case into the new enclosure - -it works perfectly!

In other words the faulty part is JUST the USB 3.0 to SATA bridge (part 4060-775135-001 REVP1) - -which according to the very helpful bodies on this thread uses a proprietary WD disk formatting structure - - which is why my drive didn’t respond correctly when I put it into a Mac Pro or scan correctly when connected with a drive adapter and 'read' with Data Rescue...

WD seems to be screwing their customers with a tiny (and unnecessary) bit of hardware lockup making their drives needlessly tricky to check / use outside a WD enclosure. It would help a lot if there was documentation or spare parts available for these drives!!
 
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