I am an owner of a WD ext harddirve and saved all my data and family photos since the kids were very young into this harddisk, as the old PCs we given away to charity 2 years ago. It was used less than 10 times and all of a sudden it cnnot be recognised, I have spent hundreds of hrs learning about this problem and trying to retrieve the data,
It turns out that WD is not making their harddisk in china and in a PC show we have been advise not to purchase.
The worst thing is the way WD treats you, When you register the product after purchase, its does tell you when the gauranteed expires, When I purchase this product from a PC show not any old shop it was a WD booth it clearly stated the that it was a 5 year warrantly, I thought that it must be a good product because all the others like Seagate, Toshiba, etc were only offering 3 years, So I stupidly bought it,
My elements failed about 5 months ago and I have been trying to learn and asking friends what to do, i didnt want to send to a shop since there are personal data and having been told that it cant be retrieved, When i gave up and checked with WD I was told that it was out fo warranty, as it is a few weeks after 2 years,
I also bought a new PC and stupidly upgraded the hard disk to 320 GB scopio at the point of purchase I was told it is 2 years warranty, The disk fail with 6 months and I had tought it was a PC problem and it was my travel place to go back to china and give it back to the store to have it fixed and was told the harddisk had failed, when i returned to SIngapore I checked the serila number and it said it is out of warranty, when its just 1 year old and it is out of warranty,
So my advise to you is DO NOT trust WD hard disk there are at least 10 PCs in this home, the only 2 hrddidsk that failured are both WD and fortunately these are the only 2 WD harddisks our family own.
This is the best advise anyone can give you so its wise for you to take it seriously
