WD MyBook freezes windows explorer

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M

Mastermonger

Commendable
Aug 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
Dear forum users,

After reading numerous forum posts on this issue, I’ve decided that none of them were exactly the same as the one I have. So I very much hope that you will be able to help me out.

I have a WD MyBook stuffed with personal videos which decided to stop working after I moved to a different country (I wrapped the disk in bubble plastic etc. –my other drive which was similarly wrapped does still work). When I first plugged it in after the move, my pc said it had to be formatted. I ignored that message and it then showed up in the “This computer”-overview, with a drive-letter assigned to it, but no information on its contents. The browser bar of explorer keeps showing a loading bar while if I interact with the disk, explorer crashes. It’s not an option for me to lose the data and if at all possible I’d prefer to keep the disk too.
Here’s what I tried so far
- Assigning a different drive letter. This is not possible because if I try to access Virtual Drive Manager, it just gets stuck on the message which says “loading Virtual Disk Manager”.
- Removing the drivers of the disk in Windows. It gets stuck on on “removing drivers”.
- Checking the disk for errors with chkdsk. The disk doesn’t respond.
- Starting the pc in safe mode and accessing it in that way. This doesn’t work either.

I really look forward to any help and ideas you might have. It would be a real shame if I lose all of my data on the disk.

Thanks in advance and best,
Tom
 
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B

b-man542

Reputable
Jun 14, 2014
23
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4,520
Have you looked at the SMART data from the disk?
Your drive sounds like its showing the typical signs of a Controller to Disk read error. Whether its simply a damaged connection from the disk to the interface board or Physical damage to the disk itself is too hard to know.

Might be able to remove the disk from inside the enclosure and attach it via SATA instead of via USB3

 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Hi there Mastermonger,

That is really unpleasant. :(

As the data stored on the drive is really important, I want to start with that your safest bet would be to contact a data recovery company. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=CyLHQE

Apart from that, you can try to attach the drive with a different cable to another computer. In case the issue persists and if the drive freezes upon access attempt, then you should use some data recovery tools for DOS mode.

You can try the Ubuntu Live CD approach out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
Just boot from a CD or a flash drive, navigate to the drive and see whether you will be able to get the data off the drive. In case this does not work, you can try some other data recovery tools for DOS as well.

After that, even though there's a chance that your system will become unresponsive once again, you can try to test it with WD's DLG tool (both short and extended tests): http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=5KAHLk

Is the drive under warranty?

You shouldn't really take the drive out of the enclosure as the model is hardware encrypted. This means that you will not be able to access the data unless the drive is not in the enclosure.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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M

Mastermonger

Commendable
Aug 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
Dear b-man and D_KNOW_WD. Thank you for answering my query.

Have you looked at the SMART data from the disk?
Click to expand...
I checked the data with the cmd commands "wmic" => "diskdrive get status" and it says OK three times (I have two external drives, one internal and a cd-station).

I've already tried to connect it to a different PC and use different cables, but all those didn't work (I get the same problem on the other PC). When I use the DLG tool, the drive shows up in the Logical Drive, but not in the Physical Drive section?

Perhaps this extra information will be useufl. In the meantime, I'll try some of the other solutions.

Best,
T
 
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M

Mastermonger

Commendable
Aug 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
So I did a CHKDSK through the CMD-prompt. It's now at "checking USN-log". This has made the disk not crash explorer anymore and it's now accessible in the Diskmanager, which now shows this picture:
rbtepA.png


When I doubleclick the hard disk in explorer it says
"Z is not accessible: The parameter is incorrect"
 
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M

Mastermonger

Commendable
Aug 26, 2016
4
0
1,510
Dear all, Just thought I'd let you know how I ultimately managed to solve this issue.
As hinted above, the chkdsk allowed me to see the disk in diskmanager. It's still at "Verifying USN journal" after 3 days (=72 hours), but at least this stopped it from freezing explorer.

The next thing I did was to install Testdisk, with which I can view my files and copy them to another disk. All of my files are accessible again, yay! (will have to probably throw out the hard disk after taking everything off though).
 
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