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WD USB/Firewire External Error

J

jkal

n00b
Joined
Dec 7, 2006
Messages
35
Hello: I have a Western Digital USB/Firewire Combo external hard drive. This drive is the special edition drive with the lights inside the enclosure. It is the 250GB model. I use this hard drive for all my backups and for external storage. The problem arises when being plugged in via the USB port. The computer recognizes the device, and properly installs it. The drive then begins to get activity via the red blinking light. After continuous activity for an upwards of ten+ minutes, the autoplay window pops up and begins to start scrolling. Before when the autoplay window was running you could see the names of files as it was scanning through, now it is just the bars going across. After the autoplay feature is done running, it also used to pop up a box and ask what you wanted to do next, and I would either close it or select 'open folders/files'; now it does not display this dialog box. When clicking on My Computer, the drive is displayed in there. But, when clicking on the assigned drive letter, it just freezes up the My Computer window. I went onto the Western Digital site and downloaded the WD Diagnostic Tools for my drive. When running the diagnostics, I first tried to get the status of the drive. After waiting awhile, it popped up a window with a status reading of "Warning." I then proceeded to run the diagnostics on this drive. I selected the Quick Test. The test began and the activity light on the drive was blinking. It said the test would take ~2+ hrs, so I decided to let it run overnight. As I checked on it this morning, it said the test was unable to complete because there were too many errors. I now believe there is something wrong with the drive!

I need help with this bad as all my backup data, along with ~100GB of MP3's, 50+GB of Movies, etc. are on this drive.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or comments are greatly appreciated! I am willing to try anything to acces and/or recover the data on this drive.

P.S. - I tried using this external in three different computers, all with the same result. I only ran the diagnostic tool on one of the computers, but the other two could not access the drive either.

Please help me! --- And thanks in advance! I am an [H] newb, so don't go too hard on me!
 
I have zero experience recovering data from an external drive, but it may be a good idea to 'simplify' the problem by taking it out of the enclosure and seeing whether you can access the drive when directly connected.

That way you can be sure that it is indeed the HDD (which is most likely the problem) and not the enclosure.
 
I believe there could be a partition table corruption of some sort. I was able to access the drive thru Disk Management, but it said the drive needed to be formatted. I declined to do so.

The model number of this drive is WD2500B007-RNN

Bump for suggestions/ideas!

Thanks!
 
Bump for any info on re-creating the partition table information and/or how to do data recovery on this drive?

Thanks.
 
Bump.. still waiting

Anyone know anything about partition tables?
 
Bump, still trying to get this external up and running.

When I right click on My Computer and go to manage, it says the disk is healthy. But, it also lists it at 232GB with all 232 GB free.

When I go into My Computer and click on the drive, it says "this drive is not yet formatted, do you wish to format now?"

How do I get the drive to function normally how it used to or how do I recover my data off ot it?

It is full and I would really like all my backups and such back.

I've been trying to get help on here with this for months and months now and no one has even tried to help me.

Anything is appreciated, once again. Thanks.
 
Update: I managed to get this drive out of the factory WD enclosure piece. I put it into another computer and set it as a slave drive. It shows up in the BIOS when booting up, but once XP boots up it is not listed under My Computer nor is it listed in the Disk Management area.

Any ideas on how I can get this drive to show up? Or a different route to take so I can begin to recover the data on this drive!!!

Even though ONE!!! person has even taken the time to reply, it would be nice if anyone reading this would throw out some ideas or suggestions!

Thanks again, as always.
 
hey Jkal,

don't you hate when you have a problem and no one cares to reply?

anyway, I'll help you as much as I can, but I won't make any promises....

first, try switching the jumper on the actual hard drive itself to slave. then set the bios to factory defaults, save and exit.

let me know.
 
I would presume that since it wont show up in windows and is asking to be formatted that you have lost any and all info stored on that disc ? did you make sure you never did anything whilst using the WD tool to search for problems ?

anyways, I know its shit, but a harddrive shouldnt be used to permanently keep backups on, as things like this can happen.

Personally, if I was you after you have tried it both in the enclosure and in the pc and it still says the same thing, then try and fix the mbr if that fails format the drive.

If fix mbr no workie then to me regardless of what was on the drive I would rather have a working harddrive than a dead one, so sooner or later you will have to format it, especially if the fix mbr dont work.

but try that first, it may actually just be that and if it is, then that can be fixed with no problem and keep the info on the drive, thats if it is just the mbr thats fuked.

Just to add, I am pretty sure its just a mbr, as its an external hdd, and they are more likely to get corrupted than internal ones and I think thats the reason why it isnt showing up in windows, as the pc does pick it up but since their is no mbr or it is damaged then it doesnt know how to mount it and a drive with a messed up mbr will show as needing formatted.

if that fails, then you have NO option but to format the drive to see if the drive actually works, as you are not gunna pay hundreds upon hundreds for professional recovery then get busted for having films on your drive and mp3's which I am sure you have not got all the masters/originals for ? and if you try and partition it you will destroy the info, so to me the only solution could be either the MBR fix or format the drive to see if it actually works and isnt faulty or 1 other solution as I have had similar but not with a hdd, but with a usb and firewire device is that one day they stopped working but all other usb devices worked ok, i couldnt understand it, and it wasnt until i formatted a month later that I then re-tried the "faulty" devices in the pc again and they worked, so it could also be your windows installation is messed up somehow ?

I would put my money on mbr tho.


google for the fix mbr command
 
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