WD Green 1.5TB unable to initialize (cyclic redundancy check)

[zkostrze]

Hey All,

I have a WD Green 1.5TB internal drive that I have been using for quite a while in a Windows Home Server with 2 other drives (this drive is the newest of the 3).  I began seeing some delayed write failures the other day so I powered down the machine, took the drive out and connected it to my Windows 7 machine in an effort to back the data up.

When I connected it to my Windows 7 machine (via a SATA to USB adapter), the first thing it told me was that it needed to be scanned.  I decided to let it do that.  It eventually finished and I was able to open the drive (Assigned drive letter D) from My Computer.  I looked at the properties of the drive to verify that it still had data on it.  It showed around 600GB of data on the drive (which was pretty much dead on) with the rest being free space.  I opened the drive, however, and found that the main folder that contained all of the data was there but there was nothing in it.

It gets worse.

Thanks to Windows Updates, my machine rebooted.  After the reboot, the drive is no longer listed in My Computer.  I opened the Disk Management tool and found that the disk was being detected but was now showing as Unallocated and required initializing.  When I try to initialize it, I get “Data error (cyclic redundancy check)”.

I’ve tried the HP USB disk format utility, that fails with an error of “Media is write protected”.

I’ve run HD Sentinel which tells me the health of the drive is 69% and that there are 51 weak sectors on the disk surface.

I’ve run “full disk recovery” scans with both RecoverMyFiles v4 and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, both of which tell me that no files/volumes/partitions were found.

I downloaded and ran the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and I get “06-Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!  Status code = 02 (Interrupted by hard or soft reset). Failure Checkpoint = 106 (Unknown test) SMAT sefl-test did not complete on drive 2!”

I don’t care if the drive is bad, I can replace it, but I’d like to try to get the data off the drive before it fails completely (unless all of this is indicative of it already failing completely).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Kieren]

Try booting to Linux with one of the following rescue CDs-

http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

OR-

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/  (use the Linux boot option, default settings.)

I have had great success with the latter, Hirens, recovering data from a failing 2 TB EARS Green drive. You would likely have better chances if you are able to connect the drive directly to SATA instead of a USB adapter.

[zkostrze]

I’ll give Hirens a try and report back, thanks.

[Kieren]

Good Luck!

[Kieren]

If the drive continues to give errors, try putting it in a quart heavy duty zip freezer bag and chilling it thoroughly in the freezer. When you bring it out, just open the bag enough to get cables connected (SATA and power). Sometimes cold can help in recovery efforts.