So today I get home from work and decided to watch a movie from my 2 TB HDD directly attached to my player, but instead I am surprised with what I find. My entire HDD has been wiped out, I mean gone! When I plug it into a regular PC it asks me if I want to format my disk. And on top of it all, I can’t get the WD TV Live to connect to my network, it wont even pull an IP address, AWESOME!!! Mind you that I just used it last night, turned it off, went to sleep, woke up in the morning and when to work, came back today and BAM!!! Just like that, my entire HDD (2 TB WD My Book BTW) gone and I live alone, so it’s not like someone messed with it or anything. So I just thought I shared this with you and just be careful, don’t get to attach to your hard working Movie Collection.
Well, like I always say, only back up the data you want to keep.
As long as your data is backed up, the situation you describe is nothing more than an annoyance (yes, it might take a couple of hours to copy stuff back, but no big deal, really). Even my NAS is backed up (and actually, at the moment, more than once). Discs will *always* fail (just a quesiton of when, not if).
In the future you might want to try the “disconnect USB device” option from your Live before you just turn it off (can’t hurt). That’s, of course, assuming you get it working again.
Oh, man, that ■■■■■.
Don’t despair though. If only the partition table got corrupted, it’s possible to restore the data.
Similar thing happened to me (different reason though…) A novice was re-installing Windows XP on my Mom’s PC after a primary drive failure, but left the External Drive (that had all her backups!) still attached. The Windows Installer caused the partition to be wiped clean on the external. I used a program called “Partition Table Doctor” and all was restored 100%. It cost me about $40, from what I remember, but it was worth every dime…
Ouch. I’ve had situations where I had plugged in an external drive into my computer only to find that it wasn’t recognized anymore. Stupid me, I formatted the thing thinking it was corrupted in some way. Luckily, I had it all backed up on another drive. Anyway, it happened again another time, but this time, I thought, I would be smart and try plugging it back in. Sure enough, it worked this time around. Little did I know that I hadn’t plugged it in properly. I learned to always have two copies of everything. It was a hard lesson.
As Tony said don’t format it may only be the partition.
You may be able to get away with a free program
Sorry to hear this. The bigger question is why this should happen in the first place? WD Live shoudn’t be deleting stuff from any attached device let alone wiping entire disk. Any explaination from WD folks?
vu3kkm wrote:
Sorry to hear this. The bigger question is why this should happen in the first place? WD Live shoudn’t be deleting stuff from any attached device let alone wiping entire disk. Any explaination from WD folks?
I don’t believe that any stuff has necessarily been deleted or the the hard disk wiped. If the partition table has been damaged then the unit will not be able to see it. If you connect a hard disc to any device it can corrupt it.
I’ve used a program called GetDataBack several times with great success.
…suffice it to say, the WD is building a reputation for corrupting data if users “forget” to go dismount the drive before shutting down. Heck the unit out to be doing the eject as PART of the shutdown.
It’d probably be safer if the drives were mounted as READ ONLY unless the user required Read/Write…
All my files on my attached drives to the Live are read-only, but it doesn’t prevent the partition table from getting corrupted if some sort of anomaly exists within the player’s firmware. All I can recommend users is to eject any attached drives before powering down the Live. I haven’t had a problem with corrupted date (knock on wood). 
TonyPh12345 wrote:
…suffice it to say, the WD is building a reputation for corrupting data if users “forget” to go dismount the drive before shutting down.
Man, am I glad I sent back my WDTV Live Plus before I ever got to this point. What a piece of junk. How hard is it to read files off a HDD without corrupting the drive? Too hard for WD’s engineers, apparently. Oh well, it’s not like they have much experience with HDDs at that company, I guess.
Don’t be a Troll Scratchie- You probably got a virus on your External Hard Drive from all your illegal downloads- more than one thing can cause a Corrupted Hard Drive- in actuality the Hard Drive is much more sensitive than WD TV- If you drop, bump or look at a Hard Drive the wrong way then it can be corrupted and it may just occur when you plug it to watch it– but I’d suspect your PC/Network is plagued with viruses- besides- you can retrieve the data from the Hard Drive (using Freeware) and return it. You may want to get a better antivirus and learn how to protect yourself because this could happen by simiply plugging it into your PC.
Saltiva wrote:
Don’t be a Troll Scratchie- You probably got a virus on your External Hard Drive from all your illegal downloads- more than one thing can cause a Corrupted Hard Drive- in actuality the Hard Drive is much more sensitive than WD TV- If you drop, bump or look at a Hard Drive the wrong way then it can be corrupted and it may just occur when you plug it to watch it– but I’d suspect your PC/Network is plagued with viruses- besides- you can retrieve the data from the Hard Drive (using Freeware) and return it. You may want to get a better antivirus and learn how to protect yourself because this could happen by simiply plugging it into your PC.
Um, if you’d care to read what I wrote, you might be able to infer that I have had zero problems of this sort, and by returning my WDTV to the manufacturer, I aim to keep it that way. Thanks for the advice, but the stable called and they’d like their high horse back.
