Hi,
Im in IT and I keep saying to people to keep backup of their data, and now I am the one at fault and in **bleep** for not doing so…
I had lots of movies, MP3 and stuff in a 3TB WD My Book Essential and suddenly it started to make blue screens of death and messages such as data could not be written. It ended not being detected in the USB devices… **bleep**!
So I dismantled the disk and and noticed that the USB interface board was in a quite **bleep**ty condition… the circuit board and tracks looked burned or at least oxidized. (will post picture if I can).
I had read that the USB interface produced by WD were not fantastic and cheaply produced so I decided to try my luck with a third party SATA/USB dock (Unitek). Then the disk was detected in the Windows Hardware Manager, however it was not detected in the Disk Management Console (hence no drive letter can be assigned).
I managed to run the WD DataLifeguard tools. The quick test FAILS. However the extended test (which took 30 hours) was PASSED! Is this a sign of hope?
Now I don’t know what to do. I really want to get my data back.
I enquired to Kroll Ontrack Data Recovery services and they will charge me between $1200 and $2200 (SGD) to do the recovery in their lab.
Shall I do that or do I have a cheaper option.
How about dedicated data recovery software. Kroll Ontrack said I can try my luck with Ontrack EasyRecovery home software, but of course they can’t guarantee that it will work. I also don’t know if this software will be usefull since the list is not listed in the Disk Management console. In addition what is the risk that attemtping to use this software would make the situation worse? Is there any software that could make a difference?
Thanks for your help.
In conclusion, I am a bit pissed at WD because I don’t see the point to give such 3 years warranty on their disk if the disk will be failing and be replaced anyway. I had many WD disks and MOST of them have failed within Warranty period. Were is the point? The disk is replaced but the DATA is GONE. I would rather pay higher for disk that really don’t fail or pay cheaper with no 3 years warranty.
Anyway, I can only blame myself for not caring to buy another 3TB WD ext HDD to duplicate all this data. My bad.
Looking forward to read your technical insights.
Cheers,
Alex
