MyBook 1TB will not power on, looking for way to extract data

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Hello, I have a MyBook 1TB P/N WDBAAG0010HCH that will not power on. I have tried replacing the power source, to no avail. Nothing lights up.

I am looking for any path to obtain the data from the HD as it is very important to me. Looking for any recommendations on how to proceed with troubleshooting.

2

Remove the drive from the enclosure and attach it to a SATA port inside your PC. This will isolate the fault to either the HDD or the USB-SATA bridge PCB. Be aware that My Books are usually encrypted, so there will be no data access via SATA (without a decryption tool).

Once you get this far, the next step will depend on what you find.

3

Thanks for the suggestion. I attached the drive to a SATA dock made by Sabrent and plugged it into my laptop. The spinning noise coming from the drive seems to be healthy. My Macbook recognizes a drive attached, but a message comes up saying “The disk you attached was not readable by this computer.” The Disk Repair Utility doesn’t seem to anything either. I suspect this has to do with the encryption on the drive.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

6

It’s not a problem for Mac or Windows if you use a Linux Live CD/Bootable USB to read EXT2/4 partitions.

The biggest problem is the Encryption on WD My Books.

8

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/

10

The foremost tools in professional data recovery all originate from Russia, China, Ukraine and the former eastern bloc. If you send your drive to one of WD’s data recovery “partners”, they will all be using PC3000, a tool produced by Russian hackers (aka “reverse engineers”).

12

@ Cerberus, I understand your cynicism, and I share it also, but there are no tools produced by Americans or Europeans that are of any note. In the USA I attribute this to a lack of proper “right to repair” legislation, and that’s because US politicians are in the pockets of big business.

In fact, what should really scare those of us in the West, is that our cold war adversaries know more about our own storage devices than we do.

14

There are no firmware level tools produced in America or Europe, otherwise the data recovery professionals would be using them. Trust me, I’ve been watching the professional data recovery forums since 2009. The top firmware tools are PC3000 (Russia) and MRT Lab (China). The top logical recovery tool is UFS Explorer (Ukraine). I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.

16

Your MyBook drive may not be powering on due to power source issues, connection problems, or physical damage. Try troubleshooting with different power sources, cables, and ports. If the drive is recognized but inaccessible, use data recovery software or seek professional assistance.