Hi to evrybody,
here’s my problem with my external WD 2TB ELEMENTS HDD, Model Number:WDBAAU0020HBK.
Windows 7: 2 months ago it became quite slow and I noticed that there were some bad sectors. I tried to regenerate them with HDD Regenerator, but not for all of them it was a success: the first ones went well, but at a certain point the program blocked itself on a sector. So I decided to wait for a backup to a new drive and I havn’t used it anymore till I’ve begun the transfer process. After a successfull 700 mb session with average speed of about 1 MB/s, I’ve decided to run a new chkdsk shot in order to make the speed transfer higher (2 months ago it worked)
Nowadays:
a) It’s not displayed in My computer:
b) visible but unknown and not allocated in Disk manager:
ps: when I enter it asks me to initialize it, but then it says that is write protected
c) with WD data life diagnostic I see it but i fail the tests (it says too many bad sectors)
working internal drive (to see differences):
external drive with problems:
failed tests:
d: with HD tune I can’t perform read and write tests and I can’t see drive infos:
it says that it’s all damaged:
this was the situation 2 months ago:
internal working drive:
e) drive map with HDD regenerator (2 months ago there were only 3 red B):
Ubuntu:
a) Disk manager sees it but as unknown:
b) With testdisk I can’t see any partition, I Can’t write MBR, I think that I can’t read or write to any sector: the log file says I/O error (number 19). I’0ve checked with a different USB cable but nothing has changed. If I select None (and not Intel PC Partition I can see one Unknown partition but I can’t read or write on it, nor MBR, nor MFT.
c) photorec:
d) fsck:
e) ntfsfix:
Results:
It seems that I can’t access the drive: I can’t read any sector, I can’t write to any sector, no SMART data (2 months ago I could have them), I can’t even see the device number. I think that it’s something not due to data messed up on it.
Questions:
a) is it correct that’s an hardware problem? (or can it still be something else?)
b) what can I do to try to backup the drive? I suppose nothng 
but I hope to be wrong…
c) If it’s mechanical: how can I know what part is causing problems?
control board?
printed circuit board controller?
hdd magnetic head?
Thanks in advance for helping me 
Diego
EDIT: externally, I can’t hearor see nothing strange. when I plug the drive in the light blue led turns on without blinking; after a while, several minutes, it begins blinking, probably due to inactivity (I think); initially I can hear the magnetic heads trying to work without unusual sounds.
Edit 2: with WinHex (and with a similar software) I “see” MBR without errors but it’s all 00, so I think that they don’t work properly
