External Drive... LOST EVERYTHING!! HELP!!!

mdanieltech · Nov 9, 2014

Hi everyone and thank you so much for reading my post!

I'll get right to the point

I have a 3tb Western Digital My Book Essential it's about 3/4 years old and I use it as a backup to my photography sessions and my website. Last night I plugged it into my PC and I just got a blinking light "White" I did a little troubleshooting seen below

1. Change the USB cord
2. Change the power cord
3. Restarted Computer
4. Turned on the power button on the drive

None of this worked I then went on to remove the hard drive from the case and installed it onto my desktop as a second drive. I booted up the PC and looked at My Computer no drive. I then went into Disk Management and saw it under storage but it was showing that it was never formatted and prompted me to set it as a MBR or GPT.. I selected MBR but then it wanted me to format the drives again and that is where I stopped and left it as is.

I found several good programs to recover the data and all I could get was just default pictures and garbage out of the drive nothing that I need.

I just want to make sure everyone knows that the drive is not dead it's totally working but I'm unable to get any data off of it I'm not sure what happened from the external drive to the putting it into my desktop seems that it just erased everything..

Please if anyone has any ideas or business to send this drive to to get my data off of there it would be great!!!

smorizio · Nov 9, 2014

some mybook have anti copying chips built into the hard drive. if the drive is removed from the case..you get that error.
Drive lock—Gain peace of mind knowing that your data is protected from
unauthorized access or theft with password protection and 256-bit hardwarebased
encryption.
Illuminated capacity gauge—See at a glance how much space is available on your
before you did anything wd may have been able to pull the data off the drive for you. dont known know that the drive bee ntuched if the data still there.

dariens007 · Nov 9, 2014

it's your backup right? so you have the data somewhere else? it's expensive to send it to a recover data, possible thousands of dollars. so since it's a backup just use your other copy and get another harddrive?

mdanieltech · Nov 9, 2014

dariens007 :

Well most of my data is some where else but there are a few sets of photos I didn't get a chance to back up... I know it's going to be a lot of money I'm just wondering how much.

karlburgdorf · Nov 9, 2014

Sounds like it isn't any issue with your hardware other than the drive itself. The first thing to check on external drives is usually the power. Since it's externally powered, and your computer can see the disk, I'm betting it's not that. From what you describe, the MBR is no longer there and all you have is raw data. That means a data recovery tool is probably the correct next step.

That said, you should also as a matter of prudence, try connecting it to a different computer and different USB ports, and always go for the shortest USB cable you can find. Also, and I realise this might not be possible, but if you can find someone who has the same device, see if you can use their power supply to check that you get the same issue to eliminate power from being the cause.

I had a corrupt drive back in 2011 and was looking for some free data recovery tools. The best one I found was from this site: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/dr.html
The English UI is not perfect but totally usable. It's quite technical, so I would not recommend this for everyone. Since I used it, it seems a Win7 update has been published, and the guy has released the source code... good on him!
Anyway, it recovered my data so I was happy. The UI is buggy but it does work. You probably will need to filter through some garbage though since there is no way for the recovery tools to determine which are legitimate files and which just look like files. It will recover everything it can. Of course, remember to save your recovered files to a different drive (though it's likely not possible in your case to save anything to the corrupt disk).

mdanieltech · Nov 9, 2014

karlburgdorf :

Sounds like it isn't any issue with your hardware other than the drive itself. The first thing to check on external drives is usually the power. Since it's externally powered, and your computer can see the disk, I'm betting it's not that. From what you describe, the MBR is no longer there and all you have is raw data. That means a data recovery tool is probably the correct next step.

That said, you should also as a matter of prudence, try connecting it to a different computer and different USB ports, and always go for the shortest USB cable you can find. Also, and I realise this might not be possible, but if you can find someone who has the same device, see if you can use their power supply to check that you get the same issue to eliminate power from being the cause.

I had a corrupt drive back in 2011 and was looking for some free data recovery tools. The best one I found was from this site: http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/dr.html
The English UI is not perfect but totally usable. It's quite technical, so I would not recommend this for everyone. Since I used it, it seems a Win7 update has been published, and the guy has released the source code... good on him!
Anyway, it recovered my data so I was happy. The UI is buggy but it does work. You probably will need to filter through some garbage though since there is no way for the recovery tools to determine which are legitimate files and which just look like files. It will recover everything it can. Of course, remember to save your recovered files to a different drive (though it's likely not possible in your case to save anything to the corrupt disk).

I actually swapped out the USB for another USB, changed the power supply and tested it on another computer all didn't help...

mdanieltech · Nov 9, 2014

So reading around the net I believe what "smorizio" said above is true looks like their is a encryption that is on the drive. This is controlled by the board that is attached to the drive that is in the enclosure...... Sooooooo what is a good software out there that I can run to break this and get my files/folders back?

Someone Somewhere · Nov 9, 2014

I would doubt that it's feasible to break it, unless it's one of the earliest ones when they made the keys on every disc the same...

Put it back in the PCB, and run the data recovery tools through that.

mdanieltech · Nov 9, 2014

Someone Somewhere :

The problem I have with this option is it wasn't posting to my PC never showed up in any fashion. I lead to believe the PCB is broke well at least the USB portion. It brings up power but the unit just sits there blinking nothing happens... That is why I ripped it out to throw it into my PC to get the files. Though I'm going to give it one more go tomorrow and see what happens

fzabkar · Nov 11, 2014

@mdanieltech, there are two problems with removing the drive from its enclosure. The first is encryption, as has already been mentioned. The second is that WD's 3TB My Books are configured with 4KB sector sizes. When you remove the drive from its enclosure, you expose its native 512e sectoring and render the file system inaccesible, even on unencrypted drives.

Does the drive spin up inside the enclosure? If not, then the simplest solution would be to obtain a matching USB-SATA bridge board. Alternatively, depending on the fault, there may be an easy DIY repair. If you upload a detailed photo, I could help you with this.

To assess the physical state of the drive, I would examine the SMART report using a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors. You would need to temporarily install the drive inside the computer for this test.

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External Drive... LOST EVERYTHING!! HELP!!!

mdanieltech

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smorizio

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dariens007

Distinguished

mdanieltech

Reputable

karlburgdorf

Distinguished

mdanieltech

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mdanieltech

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Someone Somewhere

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mdanieltech

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fzabkar

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