I am quite upset with the failure of my 2TB MyBook Essential Ext. Drive. I bought the drive in 2012, and JUST put it into service in May of this year.
I was going to move all my music to the drive…brother I am glad I did not.
However, I have 650 - 700 GB of files on the drive.
System is Win XP SP3 and drive worked whenever(3 times, only!!!) that I moved files to the drive.
Condition: Windows now sees a RAW partition with 0 bytes on drive. The drive spins right up and is silent. I have tried various software solutions and no dice. I’m looking to try that WD recovery software on a much newer machine(Win 8.1 or Win 10) to see if I can see and then duplicate the data(I stock HDDs for just this contingency). I have a drive duplicator that can perform other functions, so I pulled the drive form the enclosure and inserted the drive in one of the bays. This method shows the proper drive size, and again, the drive spins right up, but shows no files.
The drive is the dreaded WD20EARS. I know that these drives are known to fail regularly, but after only 3 writing sessions? The drive did not fail during a write session. It failed whilst doing nothing. I went to access drive, and things were not good.
My question to the esteemed group here is after trying the WD recovery software, is there other software I should try before sending the drive in for more serious data recovery efforts?
Finally, who is recommended on or off WD’s recovery partners in order to get my stuff back? I have a quote of either $429 or $749 depending on the amount of spelunking involved. That is from one recovery spec.
Thankfully, there is nothing mission critical on the drive. It might be worth the money to retrieve the files, but it would be a lot more fun to ‘ventilate’ the drive out in the ‘back 40.’
Thanks in advance for your help,
Todd
