Hello people,
my external HDD died tonight. Only a flickering white light and no spinning up. It concerns a WD My Book Essential 2TB.
I tried /checked the following:
- Hooked it up to another computer
nothing, still only a blinking light. - I checked if my computer saw anything at all
As expected with a non-spinning drive: the computer found nothing
Then, against all odds I checked my warrant: long since expired (2013). A common advice online was to contact a data recovery company. I was shocked to find that the prices involved were very high (I’m a poor and pennyless student). So that is definately my last option.
In an attempt to recover my files I decided to hook up the drive directly to my computer. I built my computer and know ‘a couple of things’ so I figured this would do nicely. also, the internet mentioned it a couple of times. I took the external HDD out of its case, hooked it up to the computer aaaand…
It worked! My computer says it detects a disk sitting there. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything with it!
When I tried to think of a reason why this would be the case I painfully realized all data is probably encrypted!
Concluding, my question now is: How can I get to my data!
I still have the component that was lodged to the HDD which provided it with power / data acces.
TL;DR: Took out a WD My Book Essential 2TB of its shell because it did not spin up and only blinked a white light; hooked it straigth to the computer to try to get to my files; PC can see the drive but can’t do anything to the disk (because of encryption?) so how do I get to my data.
My PC is running Windows 10. If you need more info, please let me know.
lights a candle I hope someone can help me 
THANKS
