Greetings. First post but long, long time user of WD drives.
This is the first WD drive failure I’ve experienced. Unfortunately, it is less than 1 year old. I have and continue to run WD Red & Black drives that are at least 8 years old. They serve as backups to backups to backups, etc.
First Topic: I am unable to access the 14TB Red Pro. I’ve tried from three different external drive bays. The drive does spin up and then gets really hot. Since it is still under warranty, WD will replace it (more on that below). However, the drive contains personal and financial information of my customers as well as my business…and lots of photos/videos. I do not want to send the drive to WD unless I can wipe it clean. I am hopeful that a forum member can assist. I am working with WD now and asked if I could destroy the drive before I ship it to them.
Second topic: In the customer support exchanges, I saw the following statement, “the replacement drive would be a re-certified hard drive.” This is not good. I wonder if this is standard wording which does not apply to professional grade drives. In the past (if I recall correctly) other users reported that they received a new drive but the warranty started from the initial purchase date.
Any advice on these 2 topics would be greatly appreciated.
Appreciate the feedback. I looked at each one, but none indicate they are capable of accessing a drive that does not appear on a computer. To clarify, the drive does not show up on Disk Utility.
I need some help on how to capture a photo of the controller. I consider myself quite capable of troubleshooting computers, but I don’t know how to determine if the drive is detected by the BIOS. Not sure if this makes a difference, but this is an Apple computer.
Answer to your questions:
Do you have the option of removing the hard drive?
Already removed.
Do you have the option of using other equipment?
Yes. I’ve placed it in 2 different 4-bay drives as well as a Newer single bay.
For customers who have had your problem, I have connected the disk to a windows computer to access more tools for the repair.
I don’t have a Window computer.
In some clients, the problem came from the mac itself.
No indication of this being the case.
Have you tried connecting another hard drive to the mac, to check that it detects the drives?
See answers above.
Have you tried using terminal to search for the HDD? I had a (WD as it happens) external drive which the MAC could not find, so I couldn’t reformat. I used terminal and located an address, then used terminal to attempt a format, and discovered the HDD was incompatible with an OS update and the reformat failed. Not a terminal expert, so I had to Google the specific commands. Other than that, I spent what seems like days without success trying to get one of the MAC’s to see the HDD. Good luck.
Not to do with fixing your issue, but a nearly new (like 3 months) WD HDD failed on me. Not only will your drive be replaced with a used-but-repaired HDD, but you have to pay shipping to WD. Also, WD customer support told me some 6 weeks back “WD is not shipping any HDD until further notice”, although they now don’t deny that’s true, but won’t confirm either.They’ve had my drive for 10 weeks, cannot tell me when or if they plan in replacing it, but repeatedly (since late August) tell me “Your replacement will be shipped in 24 to 48 hours” followed by total silence. B&H is out of the replacement Seagate, but as soon as they have stock again, I am chucking every WD in my NAS and buying all new of another brand. BTW, WD CS has told me a number of times responding to various emails, calls and chats from me that they would investigate and get right back to me, they have yet to respond to all but one inquiry. On that sole occasion, they sent an email saying, in effect, “Your call is important to us. Please stay in the line…etc”. So you should not plan on any replacement soon, and to do so just invites frustration.
I’m no expert, and always worry about using terminal, making a mistake in syntax, and nuking something important. But here is a discussion of several terminal commands which may discover all drives connected to a port, even if unmounted (I think). terminal - how to find my external hard d… - Apple Community
The first link did not provide any helpful information.
The second link provided a command to enter at the Terminal. Did not work. Computer does not see the HD.
