I have had my WD external USB2 RAID array for over 3 years now and it has been a workhorse, safely storing in it’s mirrored array many of my archive files…
…However due to the constant plugging and unplugging, the USB and power sockets in the drive have become faulty and only register as “connected” if I hold or prop the cables up just right (dry solder on the internal board I’d guess). I wanted to buy a new WD enclosure and pop the 2 1TB HDD’s from this array into the new enclosure so I can once again access my data, is this possible?
I know the HDD’s are both fine as when I can get it to connect the array works fine and the WD disk tool reports no issues. the units serial number is: [Deleted] and I think the model is 2509A (not too sure the case is sparse on details) WD P/N is: WD20000H2U-00 I am happy to buy the enclosure of course as I am well out of the warranty (even a newer model or whatever) just need reliable access to my data again. thanks on advance for your time on my case.
So it appears even though this is a situation that people have faced (based on reading other forums) no one is wise on how to put these drives in to a new enclosure (or which one I should get, if any).
So I contacted WD support and the official reply is that if I put these 2 perfectly good drives in to another case (even a WD one) I’ll loose everything…
Extracyt from official support email:
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is ******* (redacted for privacy).
Our most sincere apologies for this, I do understand you situation and I’ll be more than glad to assist you on this matter.
Unfortunately if you take the drives inside your unit out of the enclosure and put in inside another one the data will be lost as it will lose its raid configuration.
The only way to recover the data from the drives at this point would be connecting one of them directly to a computer and running a data recovery software on it.
This makes me a bit sad, as I thought being a drive based on data security, the integrity of the enclosure or the eventuality of it failing would be something that would be taken in to account. they went on further to refer me to a local data recovery centre which was nice and I have no qualms with the support, but I think I’ll be looking for a external RAID case that uses a standard enough mirror config that allows for case swapping if the case fails before the drives.
just thought people might like to know this for any future reference
