I am working on a My book essential that belongs to my niece.
Acording to her It was working fine when it was packed up for a move. It had been in a box for about a month when she hooked it up to transfer pictures onto it. She had it running for about 5 minutes, then finished with it and turned it off. Three days later she tried to use it again, and it would not power on. I.e. power light will not come on, drive will not spin up.
I tested it, and could not get it to power on. I tested the power cord with a multi-meter. (functioning within normal parameters) I carefully removed the drive from the enclosure, and attached it to the SATA port on the mother board of each of two different computers. in each case windows saw a 3(2.73?) TB drive that was uninitialized. Each computer runs windows 7, 64 bit, but on older hardware. (one home premium, one pro. bios dates 6/15/2007 and 8/8/2008 respectivly.) I assume the drive was formated GPT as it showed up as a single drive to the operating system. I have very limited experiance with GPT. I ran a trial version of file scavenger, which turned up very little.
My goals are to 1)recover data, 2)spend as little money as possible and 3)leave the drive functional, in that order of importance.
I am working on a My book essential that belongs to my niece.
Acording to her It was working fine when it was packed up for a move. It had been in a box for about a month when she hooked it up to transfer pictures onto it. She had it running for about 5 minutes, then finished with it and turned it off. Three days later she tried to use it again, and it would not power on. I.e. power light will not come on, drive will not spin up.
I tested it, and could not get it to power on. I tested the power cord with a multi-meter. (functioning within normal parameters) I carefully removed the drive from the enclosure, and attached it to the SATA port on the mother board of each of two different computers. in each case windows saw a 3(2.73?) TB drive that was uninitialized. Each computer runs windows 7, 64 bit, but on older hardware. (one home premium, one pro. bios dates 6/15/2007 and 8/8/2008 respectivly.) I assume the drive was formated GPT as it showed up as a single drive to the operating system. I have very limited experiance with GPT. I ran a trial version of file scavenger, which turned up very little.
My goals are to 1)recover data, 2)spend as little money as possible and 3)leave the drive functional, in that order of importance.
Any suggestions appreciated.
Ray
Well dude, recovering the data will depend on the -type- of Mybook Essential… If it is one of the smartware line then you’r likely out of luck since those drives are hardware-encrypted, so even taking the drive off the case won’t help at times.
The WD My Book Essential with WD SmartWare includes an encryption feature for data protection in case of theft of disk dismantling. Is there any possibility to confirm the exact model (Based on the Model Number on the back of the unit) of this disk in order to confirm if it does use the encryption system?
which suggests that this drive does use encryption.
So if I understand correctly, even if security is intentionaly not set up, there is whole disk encryption performed transperantly via the control board, using a blank (null) user password?
So does this mean that I need to repair the control circuitry to make the drive readable, or is there affordable software that will be able to allow access, given that I know the user password? (i.e. null)
which suggests that this drive does use encryption.
So if I understand correctly, even if security is intentionaly not set up, there is whole disk encryption performed transperantly via the control board, using a blank (null) user password?
So does this mean that I need to repair the control circuitry to make the drive readable, or is there affordable software that will be able to allow access, given that I know the user password? (i.e. null)
Thanks,
Ray
Yes to both, but even if the logic board is changed it could still not work.
