Picked up two of these drives a couple years ago, been connecting them semi-annually for full mirrored backups since. There’s probably not 40 hours total spin time on either one.
Went to retrieve some data yesterday and lo, neither one will spin up. Connect power from any outlet around the house or UPS (all measure 120 VAC +/-) using either power adapter connected to ether drive and behavior is the same: Permanent, slow-blink standby.
Connecting either drive using either OEM USB3 cable to different ports on three different computers running Win 10 or Win 7 (even Linux, which normally works perfectly) has no effect.
The WD Utils search for a drive(s), then return a ‘Please connect a WD device’ error when not found.
After many hours of frustration, I removed one drive (since they’re mirrored, and no longer under warranty anyway) from its enclosure and connected as internal. It was recognized immediately. But then, HS, there was another surprise: The data is encrypted!
And this, even after I did everything possible to avoid encryption – because it most often locks out the data’s owner, as in this case.
So here we have two 4TB drives with valuable data that is apparently irretrievable. Any suggestions?
PM2 (power up in standby, PUIS) was apparently (inadvertently) enabled using the WD Utils.
Once enabled, it is impossible to disable because in the standby state, the WD Utils can’t communicate with the drive to have it spin up or disable PM2. It’s a one-way street.
Sending low-level commands to the drive fails, as they are filtered by the USB interface.
Since these are Green drives, trying to configure the Advanced Power Mgmt. Level is not supported. This means that even connecting directly (via SATA cable), there are no settings that can be changed to make the drive work when it is re-connected through the bridge board (so data can be read).
The PM2 setting is apparently kept on the board, which can’t be reset due to USB interface. The board does not communicate with PC when no disk is attached so that the setting might be changed. (For clarity, it doesn’t communicate with the PC even when a disk IS attached, except to send the most basic information.)
Customer service apologized that WD’s own software could not connect with its own products and directed me to a data recovery service.
Cost estimates to recover the data are $800 - $1200.
So, there are still two perfectly good drives full of data that is inaccessible. If anyone knows the trick to reset them so that the drives may be accessed again, please share.
i go to disk drive > divice manager > i can see my book 123 written but in blur way not in dark > after i click properties i see code 45 which is not connected.
i connected through wall charger and laptop to usb 3
