I purchased my first Western Digital My Book 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive (Model: WDBF JK0040HBK-NESN; S/N: [[REMOVED]]) at the Best Buy store in Beaverton, OR on June 11, 2015. My Windows 10 operating system saw the external hard drive as (F:) and I added data to the drive until, on September 19, 2015, the drive had only 10% free space of it’s total 3.63 TB capacity remaining. At that time, using the “Shut down” function of Windows 10, I let operating system turn “off” power to my computer. After checking that power was actually “off” by insuring that all indicating lights on the computer were off, I unplugged the USB cable and the power cable from the drive, and put the drive into storage.
In view of the fact that I had more data to store, and keeping in mind that the old drive had functioned satisfactorily, on September 19, 2015 I returned to the Beaverton, OR Best Buy store and purchased another Western Digital My Book 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive (Model: WDBF JK0040HBK-NESN). With power “off” on my computer and after connecting the new drive to the USB and power cables that I had disconnected earlier, I found that my computer could not see the drive, consequently I promptly returned the drive to the Geek Squad at the Best Buy store where I had purchased it earlier that day.
After a brief inspection by a Geek Squad representative, I was informed that the drive had defective partition and that Best Buy would exchange it for another drive. I accepted this offer with the provision that Geek Squad test the replacement drive to insure that it was operating properly. Geek Squad tested the drive and informed me that it functioned per specifications.
After insuring that the power to my computer was “off”, I connected the new drive to my computer via the same USB and power cables that I had disconnected from the old drive earlier that day. After turning power “on” to the computer, the Windows 10 operating system saw the new Western Digital My Book 4TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive (Model: WDBF JK0040HBK-NESN; S/N: [[REMOVED]]) as My Book (F:). The drive functioned satisfactorily and is still working well to date.
After entering data to the new drive, I found it necessary to access some data that I had stored on the old drive that I had put into storage. Consequently, using the “Shut down” function of Windows 10, I let operating system turn “off” power to my computer. After insuring that power was “off”, I unplugged the USB and power cables from the new drive, and plugged them into the old drive. Upon restarting the computer, I found that the Windows 10 operating system could NOT SEE my old drive. Please keep in mind that this drive had been working properly until it was correctly disconnected and put into storage.
To troubleshoot the problem with my old drive, to date I have done the following:
- Using Western Digital’s Drive Utilities program, I ran the “Drive Status Check” and received the message “SMART status passed”
- Using Western Digital’s Drive Utilities program, I ran the “Quick Drive Test” and received the message “Passed”
- Contacted Best Buy Geek Squad phone Tech Support. After remotely connecting to my computer the Geek Squad agent found that the drive was off-line due to a “Signature Collision with a Disk that is Online”. Consequently the agent mapped the drive to (G:). After mapping the drive to (G:) the Windows 10 operating system could see the drive via “File Manager” but attempts to access the data resulted with the message “Location is not available. G:\ is not accessible. Access is denied.” Consequently the Geek Squad agent ran the Windows CHKDSK /r program on my computer and informed me that “If the hard drive is still not accessible when this finishes then you will need to take the hard drive to your local Best Buy to have them send the drive to our data recovery center.”
- Using Western Digital’s Data LifeGuard Diagnostics – DLGDIAG for Windows, I ran the “Quick SMART Test” and received the message “PASS”. It should be specifically noted that this program displays the drive’s Total Space: 4000.75 GB and Free Space: 3473.07 GB.
Presently, the data on the Western Digital remote hard drive is still not accessible. Using Windows to check the “Properties” on the drive shows “Drive G: file system NTFS; Used space: 0 bytes; Free space: 0 bytes. Attempting to check the drive utilizing the Properties “Tools” check function yields “A disk check could not be performed because Windows can’t access the disk.
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE. I am not willing and cannot afford to lose 3.27 TB of data. This is equivalent to 3-1/2 month of hard work by myself and others.
Anything you can do to assist me in recovering the data from my Western Digital remote hard drive will be greatly appreciated.
Truly,
Walter_Sr
E-mail: wltkarnstein@comcast.net
