Broken external hard drive?

[Zantho]

I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive. So the story, last night i was downloading some games onto steam while I sleep so it wouldn't be disturbed by anything, well it stopped working. So I just shut down my computer and called it a night. But when I wanted to see what had actually downloaded this morning, it would not recognize on my computer. Now I've looked for many things to cover this, but none seem to be with my problem. Anyways when I plug it in the white light comes on to tell me it's on, but it doesn't do anything when I plug it into my computer. Also I've checked and there is no noise coming from it whatsoever. If someone could tell me what the problem might be that would be awesome, or if you could tell me how to take it apart (without breaking it...) and look to see if anything might be loose.

Thank you very much!!

 

[smorizio]

I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 2TB Desktop External Hard Drive. So the story, last night i was downloading some games onto steam while I sleep so it wouldn't be disturbed by anything, well it stopped working. So I just shut down my computer and called it a night. But when I wanted to see what had actually downloaded this morning, it would not recognize on my computer. Now I've looked for many things to cover this, but none seem to be with my problem. Anyways when I plug it in the white light comes on to tell me it's on, but it doesn't do anything when I plug it into my computer. Also I've checked and there is no noise coming from it whatsoever. If someone could tell me what the problem might be that would be awesome, or if you could tell me how to take it apart (without breaking it...) and look to see if anything might be loose.

Thank you very much!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FlySnyJ0CQ
i would also try running some disk tool and wd drive fitness tools to see if the drive can be seen.
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

 

[canadian69]

Sounds like you are screwed if it doesn't work on another computer. Even if you can get it apart (there are many videos on YouTube for the various models) you may not be able to remove the drive and use it conventionally as the WD drives with the soldered on USB ports often do not have a standard SATA connector AND these WD products can use on the fly 256bit encryption, so even if you could access the drive your data would be useless. If you check out the WD forums you will see tons of posts regarding these drives and their failures.