MyBook Essential 2TB 1140 Device IO error

Hi all. I just register to seek help on my MyBook Essential 2TB portable hard disk that has just failed yesterday. I’m DEEPLY depressed that the drive has malfunctioned and lost all my data. I have my entire life collections of photos, movies, games and personal documents that are deem very important to me.

When i performed a search on google… i literally find LOTS and LOTS of similar user having the same problem as me and there’s NO solution to it. This is REALLY frustrating and i like to say WD have me lost confidence. I WILL NEVEER buy ANY WD product from now on.

It just happened last night when i was browsing my drive. Out of a sudden explorer became Not Responding on the MyBook Essential drive and forced me to restart my PC.

I tried updating the firmware and it tooks FOREVER and hanged. Then drive became unrecognizable. In Computer Management->Disk Management drive became Not Initialized. Clicking the drive on explorer game me the error "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

I tried various type of partition recovery software and NOTHING detects the drive. I downloaded WD QuickFormater and it also FAIL to format the drive as well. I spent whole night didn’t sleep trying to FIX the drive and i have to work today.

My S/N is . I’m really pissed off with WD at the moment. They basically just released a product that has high rate of corruption. Earlier even the WD Smartware software caused my CPU to overheat giving me 100% CPU utilization. I have to FORCED to unistall it.

I’ve tried everything i’m really not sure if there’s even any help… If not mistaken the drive is quite new. Bought it around a year plus ago… can’t really recall. Honestly, WD should be ASHAMED of themselves.

Wow sorry to hear that. :confounded: I think that on this case you need to contact a professional data recovery company to recover your data. 

Hello, I am having the same problem, I purchsed a My Book 2TB drive at Best Buy two weeks ago. When i try to read the drive from several different comuters, I recieve the same I/O error message.

Is there really no solution? Should i simply return the drive and ask for a refund? Saddly we did move a large amount of data (mainly pictures) off laptops that had disks that were filling up.

Hi

You have explained what exactly happened to my [Deleted] my-book 3 Tera too! I have it since last week I transfered almost all my important files of my research to it without backup and it easily died. It is more than 2 days i tested many soft wares and triks, i red so much messages and forums … but i got zero and zero!  I am very very frustrated, tired and angry, but the data and files are very important for me i can not accept to lose them, Did you find a solution finally?  

Big shames to people who made this [Deleted] products!    

Sorry to hear about all the data being lost here. I’ve been playing with disks for the better part of 30 years now. And I learned early on that is a de’rigueur to have two copies of your important data at all times. Do not put your life on any one product or device regardless of who the mfg is. I don’t care if it’s a NASA data vault, two copies, all times, no exceptions!

I won’t troubleshoot each one of these disks without seeing them in person. There’s just too many things that can go wrong in a modern disk. And chances are the style of repair needed is beyond your capability unless you’re trained in such matters. Same thing applies to walking a novice through all the software procedures, too tedious. If you are motivated enough you will spend the next 3-weeks day in and day out learning about how disks work and data recovery operations.You’ll get some scrap disks and tear them down and rebuild them and see if they still work. You’ll also spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on special tools and equipment necessary to work with disks. It’s not an easy matter. And the first thing is learning how to diagnose *exactly* what the failure is and what specific part is causing it.

Understand that to the everyday consumer like you and me, these are black boxes, they either work or they do not. Your files go in, they comes out. You can check the basics like having a good cable, and good power supply, and trying them on other computers. But beyond that it’s specialist time.

But I can tell you this, if they were working and all of a sudden had stopped out of the blue, just like that, then the chances of your data being intact on the platters are very very good. You may lose a few files, but I bet over 99.9% of the stuff is intact. Maybe all! But it will take a pro recovery shop equipped with knowledgeable staff and proper equipment to effect repairs and retrieve the data. That’s how it is, sorry… I’m not trying to be an ahss, just telling you like it is.

One more thing, I advise extra caution if you’re going to be messing around with utilities. If you do not know precisely what they are doing chances are you’ll make a bad situation almost impossible to recover from. If things get erased and written over, not even a pro service will be able to help. If you don’t understand what a program is doing, or if does not clearly state what it is doing, well, it’s just a disaster waiting to get worse.

P.S. When I recommend that people by an external disk I always insist they get another one of the same capacity, but of a different mfg. This reduces data loss due to a bad lot from one company. WD has to be backed up by Seagate, and the reverse is also true. There are no two ways about it.

I don’t care if they buy both or one or none from me. Just that they have two copies at all times. Sounds troublesome, but not really. In the old school days you’d have negatives and prints. How about that!! A backup!! And I bet you didn’t even think in those terms.

With the digital cameras of today, where’s the backup? Did you get a CD made at Target or Wal-Mart? Where’s the second physical copy? Or in the case of ultra-important special events, how about a tertiary copy? Well guess what, the studio that came out to the graduation and wedding probably has a copy. Perhaps they do safekeeping for a fee. Some places I deal with do exactly that. You pay a yearly fee for backup space rental. Fathom that!

So what’s your plan?

Archaven, I’m not trying specifically to make an example of you. But this is a perfect demonstration of what not to do, trying to format the disk could have erased everything forever, so you’re [Deleted] lucky the format didn’t work. Hopefully it stopped immediately, which I think it did.

You did not know a format would permanently wipe the platters did you? No, otherwise you’d not have tried that. This way if you didn’t do anything destructive your data is recoverable by a pro. Best of luck!

Thank you Keith 

I gave my hard disk to a data recovery company, they have told the data is recoverable and they proposed me to pay 215 Euros for doing that, such an expensive charge!! Actually the hard disk was working well but suddenly its drive disappeared and my PC did not identify it any more, neither other computers. its internal lights were start to work normally but I didn’t see the drive, I was not able even to format or initialize it. Somebody told me it should had been initialized before the first use but I did not know that.

My hard disk had just about 10 days old and all data on it were the first copy without any deleting or rewriting but the data include large zip files (larger than 1 or 2 Giga bites) do you think they are all recoverable? And I do not know if WD guaranty will work for data recovery! I did not find anything of that except they will exchange the hard disks but the data themselves are vital for me in the other hand if data recovery company open the hard its guaranty will be expired.

215 is a good price.

WD will not pay for any recovery service.

Call customer service and let them know you are having a recovery operation performed. It should not void the warranty.