I just signed up here after searching counless forums and Googe for weeks. Please take the time to at least try to help because my files are very important to my work as well as personal files.
MY SETUP
Western Digital 300 GB My Book
Dell XPS 1530 Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1 GHz with 4 GB Ram
Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
MY PROBLEM
External Hard Drive worked fine for months. I moved away for about 6 months and the drive continued to work until I moved back home. I hooked it up and plugged it in and my computer could not find it. It finally showed up as "Local Disk (F:)" instead of "My Book (F:)" and when I try to access the drive, an error says that it must be formatted before use.
I have nearly the capacity of 300GB on the drive. Windows Disk Management and Device Manager show the drive as WD External Hard Drive and I am able to change the drive letter, however, I am still not able to access my files. I have tried it on 3 other computers and get the same results.
The drive spins and makes no clicking sound or anything. It appears to be mechanically sound but I am not able to access the drive or my files.
I just need ANY and I mean ANY way at all to get these files and transfer them to another drive. I'd rather not spend any money, but I am willing to spend less than 500 to get these files. I would rather have a solution that I can use to get them. I'm also going to include a list of everything that I have tried.
A work colleague suggested running a check disk and I plan to do so when I get back home.
I am posting this from work so I do not have the exact error messages, but once I return home, I will post them if needed.
WHAT I HAVE ATTEMPTED
Connecting drive to another computer
-Same problem occurs.
Changing drive letter
-Same
Running trial version of Zero Assumption Recovery
-Shows data on the drive but then shows bad sectors and a window shows up saying it cannot complete the scan and must close the program
Reinstalling drivers
-Same problem
Connecting another external hard drive to the notebook
-The second drive works fine.
I would remove the hard drive from the My Book and directly connect it to a PC.
On older My Books, of you used their 'backup' software, then the files can only be read by a My Book.
That may or may not be the case today. If you were using windows to copy files there, then there should be no formatting conflict if you connect it straight to a PC.
If it's an IDE drive you may need to set the drive as Master or Slave, depending on what's in your PC now. If it's SATA, and your board has SATA ports, check if the board is SATA150MBs only or both 150 and 300MBs, (sometimes called SATA 1.5Gbs and SATA 3.0Gbs.)
The worst would be if the HD is SATA, but your board has no SATA ports. Then you'd need to take it to another PC that did, or purchase an add-on card.
As for running Chkdsk on it. DO NOT do that until you determine if the drive is "readable" on it's own, as in outside the My Book.
*IF* the drive is begining to fail mechanically, then running CHKDSK on it could very easily kill it without you recovering a single file.
Tallon41
Its the WDG1C3200 and I believe it is IDE.
I transferred my files using Explorer but I have used the software at least once.
What do you suggest I do before chkdsk? I definitely don't want to kill the drive completely so thanks for the warning. I'm not sure if its mechanical or not but I don't want to find out the hard way.
Thank you for replying, I'm stressing like crazy over this
I don't have a working PC in my house. What can i do?
You've tried it on 3 PC's. work then?
1. Ask friends for referrals to local PC repair shops. Call them and ask what they would charge to connect a drive and see if it is readable.
I would not charge for such a request in my shop.
I don't have a working PC in my house. What can i do?
You've tried it on 3 PC's. work then?
1. Ask friends for referrals to local PC repair shops. Call them and ask what they would charge to connect a drive and see if it is readable.
I would not charge for such a request in my shop.
I'm about to go up to office depot to get the USB cable.
If that doesn't work, DiskDoctor does a free diagnostic before I have to pay for anything so I may try that. Or do you know of any good quality companies that can help? I'm hoping to spend less than a few thousand but if its as close to 100% successful as it can get, I can spare some more change. But I'd much rather fix this without spending too much money.
I'm about to go up to office depot to get the USB cable.
If that doesn't work, DiskDoctor does a free diagnostic before I have to pay for anything so I may try that. Or do you know of any good quality companies that can help? I'm hoping to spend less than a few thousand but if its as close to 100% successful as it can get, I can spare some more change. But I'd much rather fix this without spending too much money.
our co. is a Seagate Data Recovery partner, and we send them all our drives. Reputible companies will look at the drive, and then quote you pricing based on what they were able to recover. Figure about $750 minimum. If the drive spins, then it's cheaper as they don't have to replace the motor or (perhaps,) the Printed Cuircut Board. But you are not "there" yet.
If you can get the drive to read somewhat, then there's a good chance the problem is that some of the Partition table file chains are broken. This is where CHKDSK /R will come in handy. If you are willing to spend the $ to recover the data if the drive IS broken, then it will not hurt you to run CHKDSK /R on it, as it will not affect their success in recovering the data, only (potentially,) how long the recovery takes.
I'm about to go up to office depot to get the USB cable.
If that doesn't work, DiskDoctor does a free diagnostic before I have to pay for anything so I may try that. Or do you know of any good quality companies that can help? I'm hoping to spend less than a few thousand but if its as close to 100% successful as it can get, I can spare some more change. But I'd much rather fix this without spending too much money.
our co. is a Seagate Data Recovery partner, and we send them all our drives. Reputible companies will look at the drive, and then quote you pricing based on what they were able to recover. Figure about $750 minimum. If the drive spins, then it's cheaper as they don't have to replace the motor or (perhaps,) the Printed Cuircut Board. But you are not "there" yet.
If you can get the drive to read somewhat, then there's a good chance the problem is that some of the Partition table file chains are broken. This is where CHKDSK /R will come in handy. If you are willing to spend the $ to recover the data if the drive IS broken, then it will not hurt you to run CHKDSK /R on it, as it will not affect their success in recovering the data, only (potentially,) how long the recovery takes.
Tallon41
I wasn't able to find the cable, but I have a question before I order one. Wouldn't the cord be the same as plugging the external drive to my computer if the heads are possible broken?
And I tried chkdsk /R in the command prompt and after hitting enter, it went down to a new line and didn't do anything else. (I ran it as administrator). I went to the properties and tried to check the drive there but it said it had to be formatted first.
Is the MyBook backup software available online for the version I have? I haven't looked yet, I'm about to, because it was originally installed from the drive itself on my other laptop but I believe I uninstalled it.
Based on what you've heard from me, how much of my files do you figure I could get back using Seagate or any other company? I'm sure you'd have to see the drive itself to give me a good answer but do you have any past clients with similar specific problems?
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