I am the current owner of a Western Digital Portable HDD - Blue - 320 GB (Advertised).
Recently, I have discovered I had bad sectors (Which were remapped I guess)… How is something I don’t know because I have already had it replaced and have taken good care of it.
Well, I right-clicked in My Computer on the drive and ran Windows Error Checking on it. It took over a day and finally came up with a failure message. During the test, the drive made funky (yes, funky) noises and now is inaccessible. (It will NOT spin up, or show up as a drive in XP [but it does go into sleep mode o.0])
I do not have my files backed up, and this is so because this IS my backup =.
I have access to WinXP, Ubuntu, Mac OSX, and Win7, and the bottom line is that I don’t know what to do… I bought it at Walmart (about $100) and also a replacement plan… but the thing is, I’m not sure if it is dead, and whether or not I can somehow recover my files without disassembly…
Help? (I’m sorry in advance if this has been posted in the past… I would just like to know what I should do)
Usually windows checks the Partition and data on the drive. To test the drive hardware, I would use our DLG Diagnostics. If that passes, then there’s something going on with the partition/data that’s causing corruption. If it fails, then the drive needs to be replaced.
You mention all of these different OS’s you have access to, are you using that drive to pass data between them? If that’s the case, you could be causing data corruption by doing so.
You do not have a backup of anything until you have your data in at least two locations (on multtiple drives). You can’t move all you data to one location, and then call that a backup. It’s not a backup.
The drive does NOT show up in the program (Data Life Guard Diagnostics), nor in My Computer. It is NOT listed in Device Manager, and whne I plug it in, I get the error on the bottom right about the ‘new hardware not being able to install properly’.
I have only WRITTEN to the drive in Windows XP.
Okay, not back-up, “TEMP. Storage” :P My drives in my PC (All four) are old and small in size.
What else can I do without dissasembling the thing? The people I work with might be able to loan me another portable enclosure to put the drive in, but… wouldn’t that void whatever warranty is included?
This is the second WD My Passport I’ve had fail, so I’ve concluded that they are a heaping pile of [deleted] from China. I’m getting a refund from Wal-Mart.
