WD External Drive

[firebillfirebill]

I have a 500 GB WD external drive that has worked fine until today. It has power because the light comes on. It also makes a noise like a disk running at start up. It just will not work. I have tried it on two computers just to make sure. Any ideas?

 

[fzabkar]

How do UVCView and HD Sentinel identify the drive? UVCView talks to the USB-SATA bridge IC inside the enclosure whereas HD Sentinel attempts to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

 

[TCG-CT]

I have a 500 GB WD external drive that has worked fine until today. It has power because the light comes on. It also makes a noise like a disk running at start up. It just will not work. I have tried it on two computers just to make sure. Any ideas?

I would be willing to bet that the external controller board has kicked the bucket. I have seen it hundreds of times. Unless the drive is still under warranty, I would suggest removing the drive from it's enclosure very carefully, then plugging the drive into the host system via native sata or using an external adapter. I have done this hundreds of times, as the drives are good 98% of the time, and will go for many years once removed from the enclosure, with no data loss.