Re: How to eliminate potential problems on USB Powered Drives and keep them healthy

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

Im not sure this is the right place to post, but im new here and i need my problem to be fixed as soon as possible. 

My external HD fell this morning and since then my mac wont recognize it (it worked perfectly last night). When i plug it to my mac this message comes out “The Disk you inserted was not readable by this computer”.  I thought it might have been some kind of error of my computer so i tried it on my sister’s mac. It gave me the same message. I clicked on initialize and tried repairing the disk. Still didnt work, so i went to my mom’s PC and it recognized the HD but it wouldnt read it so i couldnt see the “my passport” icon.

Im using a mac OS X version 10.5.8 and this is what appears on disk utility about the HD

Name : WD Media

Type : Disk

Partition Map Scheme : Unformatted

Disk Identifier : disk2

Media Name : WD Media

Media Type : Generic

Connection Bus : USB

USB Serial Number : 202020202020202020202020202020

Device Tree : /PCI0@0/EHC2@6,1/@3:0

Writable : Yes

Ejectable : Yes

Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed : No

Location : External

Total Capacity : 2 TB (2,199,023,255,552 Bytes)

S.M.A.R.T. Status : Not Supported

Disk Number : 2

Partition Number : 0

Im desperate, i need to recover my files ASAP as im a photographer and ALL my pictures from all my photo shoots are saved on that HD, not to mention my family pictures and trips. PLEASE HELP ME, im freaking out!

Thanks, Dani

2

DanielaG,

I am sorry that I am unable to give you an easy fix for your problem. If it fell down, there is a high probability that the disk drive inside your USB device could become physically damaged. Though the mechanical part damaged, electronic parts still intact so you’ll see drive still communicating with your Mac.

There are no DIY tricks to bring it back damaged hard disk drives. Only possible way is to contact WD approved Data Recovery agents and ask them to recover your data. You can find them in WD support website. This will cost you somewhere in between US$ 500 to 2000.

Never keep important data only on one location. Especially external drives are subject to various hazards like your incident and contained data can be lost for ever. There are certain utilities to recover bad sectors. But if your head assembly on the drive is already damaged, using these utilities will render your drive unrecoverable even by professional help.

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