Hi guys! I’ve been a lurker here for quite some time but this the first time I’ve posted anything. As such, I’ve already attempted to solve the problem myself, searched endlessly for an answer, and even visited the geek squad guys at my local Best Buy.
The Problem
I have 2 WD products that have worked seemlessly together for the last 6 months until just a few days ago. The products are a WD TV Personal Edition media player and a 3TB WD My Book external hard drive. A few days ago, I went to play a movie and went to my movies section of the WD TV and low and behold, a screen popped up saying the source (my WD external) had been disconnected and asked me if I wanted to choose another source. The hard drive works fine on my computer and I’ve searched for answers for the past few days and attempted my own troubleshooting to resolve the problem to no avail.
How I’ve tried to resolve the Problem
So first, I unplugged the hard drive, turned off the WD TV for 5 minutes, turned it back on, plugged the hard drive back in after it loaded. It begins to attempt to read the files (black bar on top) but doesn’t last as long as it should and goes away. Source is still not available.
Next I checked the firmwares are up to date. Check.
Took my hard drive to Geek Squad. They confirmed my hard drive is working fine (using all my cords) and has no issues. Check.
Loaded up my (up to date) WD Drive Utilities program and checked my drive there. Now here’s where it gets weird. My Smart Status passed fine, but the Quick Drive Test and Complete Drive Test both failed. These two tests only lasted 15 seconds exactly before failing my drive, never even making it past 0%. Now I looked for an answer to this dilemma and another member on these forums suggested using WD Data LifeGuard Diagnostics tool for a couple reasons over the Utilities program. During both Quick and Extended Tests, my drive passed. So now I’m thinking the problem truly isn’t my external drive, but rather the problem lies with my WD TV Personal Edition.
-After searching for more answers, some members suggested to restore the WD TV to factory settings. I did this and yet it’s still not recognizing my WD external. Well, it’s recognizing when I plug it in and it attempts to read the data from it (black bar on top pops up), but it stops 5 seconds into attempting to load the contents of my hard drive.
Please help. I’m at my wits end here trying to resolve this issue.
There’s been a problem some firmwares back with USB3 drives connected to the back port. Now, you’re usually getting such a problem if the drive is formatted with ExFAT. If it’s formatted with NTFS, it usually helps to do a chkdsk in Windows and then it’s recognized again from when on you always need to eject it manually pressing the button on the remote. If that doesn’t do it, you might wanna try another USB cable (shorter, thicker variety).
Thank-you for the reply. As you suggested, I ran chkdsk in command prompt and during stage 2, it gave me this error message:
Stage 2: Examining file name linkage …
Error detected in index $I30 for file 5.
An unspecified error occurred <766f6c756d652e63 461>
*Also randomly received error <766f6c756d652e63 44e>
So naturally, I tried to fix the error (head in the clouds) and tried [chkdsk /r /f G:], and got back the same error (766…e63 461). Not sure what to do at this point besides reformatting or writing zeroes. Any other ideas?
Ok. So I solved the problem, though the solution does not involve saving my data. Oh well. At least I saved my hard drive. My data can be replaced so no biggie. I used WD Drive Utilities and the Drive Erase tool. Went back to DOS and ran chkdsk again and no problems seem to be there anymore. However, I’m currently running a [chkdsk /r G:] (1% so far) looking for bad clusters and seeing if I can fix them. I will update when the process is over and I re-check my hard drive with WD TV.
Edit: Also, if you guys are like me and have lots of downloaded movies, and you want to create a list of all the files in your movie folder so you can go back and download the same movies again without resorting to researching and googling the movies all over again, there’s a simple process to do that.
Steps
Open up notepad.
Copy and paste the following into notepad: dir /s . >dirlist.txt
3. Save as listing.bat
4. Make sure you save the .bat file in the main folder you want a list made. If the main folder has other folders within it, don’t worry, it will also include the all the files in each subdirectory.
Another benefit of this is there’s no guesswork about which particular movie you had downloaded before as it also lists the file size. Just crosscheck the file size with the title and you’re all set!
Ok, final update here. My WD My Book has passed all tests with flying colors! The [chkdsk /r G:] command took about 7 hours to complete which discovered and fixed only 1 bad sector (Thank God!). I had to delete most of the data on the hard drive, though I transfered what I could (the irreplaceable data such as old family movies) onto my laptop as I have no other hard drive to transfer to. Besides, the 1 bad sector was a logical error, which means after fixing it, I still have the same capacity available for storage use as I did when it was brand new. My WD hard drive now works again flawlessly with my WD TV media player and things are back to normal.
Preventative Maintenance
I plan to invest in a seperate hard drive for a back up storage or emergency drive to transfer data onto, but I’m unsure what hard drive (specific brand and model) I should get. Any tips or ideas for a permanent back up hard drive that’s not prone to errors and is most reliable for this purpose? Any help in this arena would be much appreciated! Thanks!
I have a 3TB WD My Book as you mentioned you also have in your collection, but you also 3x3TB WD Elements. Is there any reason you prefer the Element over the My Book? Just asking out of curiousity
Edit: Your link seems to be to a deleted blog post.
I prefer the WD Elements for price + no data encryption
Which means if the enclosure or controller board goes faulty you can remove the hdd and put it in another enclosure or inside your PC
(you can’t do that with a MyBook … data is encrypted on the controller board. And from what i’ve read, it doesent matter if you use Smartware or not. If you removed the HDD from the Mybook and put it in you computer … it won’t see any of your data … just an option to Format it)
Only bought the MyBook at the time, cus it was on Sale pretty cheap at a local retailer
Bought the 3x 3TB WD Elements afterwards (Christmas Sale)
That’s a pretty awesome analysis on that blog post! And thanks for your input, I too think I’ll be sticking with WD for a while and I’ll be looking into the Element HDD as you suggested. 6 months of consistent use with only one minor hickup which was able to be fully restored is not bad in my experience, but that data encryption is killer if I’m am not able to retrieve and transfer data when the next hickup arises.
Oh well. At least I saved my hard drive. My data can be replaced so no biggie. I used WD Drive Utilities and the Drive Erase tool. Went back to DOS and ran chkdsk again and no problems seem to be there anymore. However, I’m currently running a [chkdsk /r G:] (1% so far) looking for bad clusters and seeing if I can fix them. I will update when the process is over and I re-check my hard drive with WD TV. 
The [chkdsk /r G:] command took about 7 hours to complete which discovered and fixed only 1 bad sector (Thank God!). I had to delete most of the data on the hard drive, though I transfered what I could (the irreplaceable data such as old family movies) onto my laptop as I have no other hard drive to transfer to. Besides, the 1 bad sector was a logical error, which means after fixing it, I still have the same capacity available for storage use as I did when it was brand new. My WD hard drive now works again flawlessly with my WD TV media player and things are back to normal.
