WD Elements 2TB External hard drive BLINKING LIGHT Problem

Hey folks, an update on my case…

I had the bloke at the local computer shop open it up and take a look…says it’s cactus, time for data recovery. I goes without saying it’s the last time I buy a WD drive of any type. A terminal fault in a drive about a year old is unacceptable.

Posted in another thread but this fixed my problem with computer not detecting WD drive:

Just bought a new 2 TB WD Element and found it didnt plug and play like other external drive. Read someone’s suggestion about it may not have enough power so plugged the power into a DEDICATED power socket and it works (Required you to format it again via windows). Most people would have a multi socket adaptor for their PC, Monitor, etc which is why this problem is so often.

I have Windows 7 Operation System. Hope this helps anyone whom bought it. Wierd, after i formatted, i replugged it into the one I had with multi adaptor socket and it works fine now!

Same for me. Bought a new one arrived today and although two laptops recognized it had been connected and drivers were installed, the drive was not visible in explorer. Plugging directly into a wall plug resolved the problem. Note though it does seem where the ac plugs into the drive it mates very poorly so even moving the drive slightly causes a power reduction resulting in explorer losing the drive. This might explain why others have had this problem after moving the unit. Seem like a basic design faults to me.

Drat! Just had the same thing happen to my less than 6 month old 2 TB drive!!! The only difference I can see between mine and what eveyone else has encountered is that I can see the drive in my device manager under drives. Is there a chance this will help me use some sort of utility so I can see the drive in My Computer? I’ve loaded 30 years of pictures on this drive and I’m pretty sick about it. Also, if all hope is lost, does anyone have a rough estimate about how much it would cost to recover the data?

I bought a wd hd element a year ago. It quited working several month ago. I put many of my pictures there. I was so upset. Is there a better (reliable) brand external HD there?

Any drive can have a problem at any time. Never trust important data to just one drive internal or external no matter who makes it. A backup is 2 copies in different locations. Did you make a new post describing your problem and computer and what you have tried?

Joe

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Maybe this will help. But keep in Mind I offer a 100% money back guarantee on my free advice! My boss has a drive with these symptoms and I tried most everything I know to recover the files for free but no luck. After removing the drive from its enclosure and installing it in my system, I downloaded DiskInternals Partition Recovery 4.0 and I was then able to see the contents of the drive. So I splurged for the paid version at $139. Well worth it. I was able to recover all of his irreplaceable photos and save them to a different drive. It took hours but I now have this tool in my back pocket for next time. Good luck and I hope this helps someone. -Tom

power is working but is not registering on laptop

I have the same blinking symptom … in during watching movie accidently movie stoped and after that i have only blinking light … i can’t see ext.hard in my computer … I think compony better think about solu and not advertise about crop product … look at botton adv >>>> put your life on it :)))) and lose it so easily

This is the 2nd Western Digital external drive that I have lost data on.  I am done with them.  There is no excuse in this day and age to have hard drives die in months.   We buy externals to have backup. 

I am better off just putting in an extra drive in the PC.  I have used many brands- only WD have died.

If we have to pay to have data recovered- then why back up at all?  Thumbs down.

I too had the same exact problem.  I cant believe we all are on the WD community page and have not received a single comment from the manufacturer!  They should step forward and offer us some assistance or apologies at least…

falminana wrote:

I too had the same exact problem.  I cant believe we all are on the WD community page and have not received a single comment from the manufacturer!  They should step forward and offer us some assistance or apologies at least…

dude…  user’s forum

you can contact WD on this link :

http://support.wdc.com/contact/index.asp?wdc_lang=en

They don’t reply to emails, so don’t even bother with that.

I’ve had this problem for about 2 weeks and i can’t get rid of this blinking logo problem, can’t watch a movie without it freezing up, it’s a pricey paperweight thats all it is now…

I’m calling them tomorrow

what other alternative products are there similar to WDTV live hub?

because it doesn’t seem anyones interested in fixing problems

Does anyone know how to fix this using a Mac Book Pro??

I think that I have found the issue.  Tonight my daughter plugged the Laptop cord into the hard drive instead of the external HD power and now I have the same issue, HD broken!  Blinking light and no HD movement.  I think that it fried the circuit card located on the outside of the hard drive.  I do not believe that this hurt the internal hard drive or motor so I am going to replace the outside circuit card.  I found the same hard drive at a local store.  I am not recomending doing this but I will do it because my data is more importaint then a warrenty.  All that you need to do is take out of case.  Disconnect the USB Card.  then use a star drive to remove the card on the back.  This needs to be precise and make sure you don’t break the pins that connect the circuit card to the phisical drive.

.

Thank you… would it be possible to outline the steps you took… cause I think there are  many here suffering from the blinking light issues… and want a way to simply gain access to the data.

  1. how to  open the case
  2. what is a star drive
  3. what did you do to recover the data

curious & Apologies if these are too basic  questions

Larrry

I also had the problem with a 2TB disk.  I didn’t try to get it replaced by WD as the backp data and yes it was a duplicate backup is confidential data that I would rather trash the disk than allow it into others hands.   I took the disk out of the case removed the circuit card and mounted it inside my destop.  I had to reinitialize the disk which of course meant the data was lost but the desk appeared to be working at least at first.  I went ahaead and attempted to copy the data over again from the original source but after a half hour or so the disk copy failed saying the destination could not be found the disk had dissapeared from teh Windows 7 64-bit OS.  A reboot brought the disk back again but this has repeated iteself over and over at the msot a half hour of copying files then the disk just dissapears.  I was able to do a full surface scan of the disk and it didn’t reprot any erros but you start copying files and the disk jsut goes away…00  I suspect there is some component on the disk circuit board that fails when it gets hot and that only happend with continous use.  And yes the disk is placed in a well ventilated portion of my desktop case.   IT will be a while before I buy another WD disk.  Who is the most reliable disk manfacture seems to go in cycles at one point brand A as new models come out they may have a lemon series and it might become brand B.  I’ve worked with computer since the days when my first 20MB and yes thats MB not GB hard drive cost me $500.    Put that in a Leading Edge Model computer with an 8088 processor a cyrix math coprocess had about $2,500 tied up in that first PC and that was 1986 so that would be a lot more in todays dollars.

just saw your post, have exact same problem with my imac, today I opened disk utilty and erased the drive and bingo it showed up straight away, not ideal answer but as obviuosly all old back ups are gone but at least all is backed up again from today, I for one wont be buying this brand again.

Mine worked for a week (just enough time to transfer all of my photos) and then I bumped it. Now I have the blinking light problem too and it’s aggravating.

I can’t see it listed under My Computer or Disk Management. I’ve tried to plugging the power cord directly into the wall socket (instead of an extention cord I use), different computers, etc. Any other easy fixes I can try before opening up the case itself?