I have a WD My Book 500GB portable hard disk. Today when I pluged it in it didn’t get powered up. Assuming power unit have brown up I deassemble the device and remove the hard disk. Then I connect it to the PC using SATA cabel and power cabel. When machine boots I heard a creek noise that I usually hear when the device power up before. But After OS get booted up I didn’t see 500Gb hard’s partitions mounted. I’m using Ubuntu LInux 11.04. Then I check Disk utility application. In there the hard disk is listed under PATA host adapter. It days devide is healthy. But the problem is disk is unallocated. Does this mean that my data have been lost? I have lots of valuable data on the disk. If so how can I recover them.
Hi, try using a data recovery program, but if you have a my book that support hardware encryption, you wont be able to recover your files if the hard drive is not connected to the external case.
I would not be playing with recovery programs till you have diagnosed the exact cause of failure. An auto mechanic doesn’t start taking things apart randomly till he diagnoses the problem, and neither should you.
Personally, I’d be looking for a data recovery professional at this point, if you want to see the data again. And it should be noted, WD just told me this disk has a design life of 5 years. That got me a bit upset to hear that.
Me too found out about the hardware encryption. But I’m still not sure about the problem. whether it is power adapter or the board inside the enclosure have failed. How can I found out that? One thing I notise it I get a little electric shock(very little on since 12V and 1.5A) which I touch the earch out of the adapter(where it connected to the board) I’m thining that if power adapter have screwed up. I didn’t have a multimeter or anything.
In order to do basic troubleshooting, you’ll need to be able to swap the adapter and bridgeboard, and perhaps test them with a multi-meter. If not, enlist the help of someone that has those spare parts and the right tools.
To get the right results you need the right tools, right materials, right supplies.
