Trying to read My Book Essential indefinitely

Portable Drives My Passport
1

Hi, for reference; I’m a complete novice in my understanding of these types of things.

I plug USB in, and it brings up a screen for password entry (like normal). I enter the password and then that’s pretty much all I get. The Hard Drive is spinning and powered, so to me it sounds like it knows there’s a Drive there, and it’s trying to read, but it can’t communicate. I’ve tried to run it on multiple PC’s (over Windows Vista and Win 8) and it reaches the same problem. Also have tried in different areas of the house to test any power issues. Tried a brand new cable and had no luck with (results stayed the same).

I tried a couple of solutions from in here (I was kind of guessing if i were even looking in the right places);

  • I can open Disk Management (on win 8), but it doesn’t bring up any of my drives (even C: ), as it just has the line that says it’s searching for the drives. When I unplug the External HD it works fine.

  • I tried running the “Data Lifeguard Diagnostic” but it sort of starts running and then just closes on it’s own with no information while the HD is plugged in. It runs fine and gives me the all clear when I run it with the External HD unplugged.

So I’m not sure where that leaves me? 

I’m mostly interested in recovering the data, but of course I’d appreciate being able to fix/repair/get working the External HD itself.

Cheers in advance.

2

Hi Butlee, if you are using password protection but the My Book does not appear after unlocking it, it might be related to a data corruption problem. You can check the link below to see if the My Book is recognized on the disk management . 

How to access Disk Management in Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 to manage hard drives 

3

Yeah I did mention in my post that when I open Disk Management it just endlessly keeps searching for my Drives - ie, it won’t even bring up C Drive or anything. It doesn’t “break” as such, it just keeps searching, even if I leave it for hours.

So it sounds like I’m in a fairly bad place. Is there any chance of retrieving data if it’s a corruption issue? There are posts explaining (independent) data recovery services and similar. Is this the path I should be following?

4

Hi again, you can try using a data recovery program, but if the data is to damaged it might not work. You can also try to contact any of the recommended data recovery companies on the WD support page. 

http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?wdc_lang=en