I am a loyal customer of WD’s Products, I have 2 units of WD My Passport (500Gb + 1Tb) and also I do have 1 unit of your high-end product called “ WD My Book Essetial – 3 Tb” So far I do not have any issues with the “ WD My Passport” type. However I really do disappointed with “WD My Book” type.
I bought “WD My Book” around middle 2012 with a very premium price at that time @ the local IT Retail Store which is also a WD Master Dealer with the expectation that I can store & keep tons of my personal files, pictures & musics. The first 1 year of using the products, it seems working fine, however after about a year of used, I started to notice that sometimes this hard drive can not be detected by my PC unless I have to plug out the USB cable first and then plug back in to the USB port, just then I can see the files. It’s been going on for sometimes, and happened occasionally. Since I still can access the files by the same processed as I mentioned above, I still belief the product is OK and it is a normal condition. But what happen in early January 2015 is very very very made me Angry & Sad, I can not access the files at all. It just can not be detected by the PC after so many times of trying, it just kept giving the message “The parameter is incorrect” and also another message “ Data error (cyclic redundancy check).
With a very sad & upset feeling, I started to reach out for help from the dealer which I bought the unit from and he asked me to bring the hard drive and let his technician check. They said my hard drive is totally damage, and my data is GONE !!!. Is this the Quality of WD's Products ? just last for 2 or 3 years of used and GONE/DAMAGE ?
With this letter I do hope to get WD Team attention and support from this forum to get my data back. Thank you.
Hi RICKO11, welcome to the WD Community. Sorry to hear you cannot access your files. It is always recommended to maintaining a backup of your data at all times, as a best practice to ensure the availability of your information and minimal potential data loss. There are many variables that can result in a failed drive, such as power outages, accidental physical damage, internal component failure, and computer viruses, just to name a few. In any scenario, data recovery is not a failsafe. For your case I recommend you to contact support directly for assistance.
RICKO11 wrote:
…my hard drive is totally damage, and my data is GONE !!!.
(INFORMAL IDEAS PERFORMED AT YOUR OWN RISK AND CERTAINLY NOT WD APPROVED)
Get a friendly technician to :-
-
open the box and remove hard drive
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take off the power/USB circuit board
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plug the harddrive into a SATA connector of a motherboard running Windows8/8.1
Then there will be 2 questions:-
a. at powerup does the computer BIOS recognise the drive?
If NO, then panic. See if a Linux Live CD recognises the drive.
b. what does Windows disk management say?
If it thinks its a new disk DO NOT INITIALISE OR FORMAT IT AND SEE **
If it thinks its a normal disk then see if you can access the files.
** the USB/power ciruit board may encrypt the data on the disk including access information.
The only way (that I know) to retrieve the data in this case is to find the IDENTICAL circuit board on Ebay (or whereever) and try that. This needs to be the same model+revision number as the original.
(There is a chance that the file system may be Linux but I think that only applies to My Book LIVE boxes.)
Thank you for your info. Appreciate it a lot, and will try it.
Regards,
Thank you
Opening the drive and reconnecting without the circuit board won’t work. That board provides hardware encryption so any data recovered would be encrypted. Opening the drive also voidsthe warranty.
Joe
