Malefunctioning external hard drive

[idanperl]

Hi all,

I have a Western Digital "My Book Essential" external hard drive, which seems to have stopped working. More specifically, I plug it into my laptop and nothing happens.

*My laptop runs Windows 8. Is it relevant?

* It used to work fine with my PC. I don't know if it would still work fine, since I don't have this PC anymore. That PC ran windows 10.

* The cable is probably not the problem, since I tried another cable and it didn't help.

* I tried different usb sockets, and it didn't help.

* I tried to connect it to two other computers, one runs Ubuntu, and the other runs windows 7, and it didn't help

* Having said all that, it happened once that I plugged it to my laptop and everything actually worked just fine. I opened disk management, and it was written there that the disk is "healthy". This made me think that the drive is fine and this problem might be easily fixed somehow. After plugging it out and back in, the problem was back.


Help!

 

[popatim]

Sounds like either the drive itself or the enclosure is having issues.
If its still under warranty then contact the manufacturer for an RMA.
If its not longer under warranty you might want to open the enclosure and try using the drive as an internal drive. Please be aware that not all enclosures have sata drives in them.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, idanperl!

Great job with the troubleshooting so far! I'd advise you to backup your data from the external WD My Book as soon as you manage to access it again. If it pops up in Disk Management again, make sure you try to change the drive letter of the external HDD.
I'd also strongly recommend you to run the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics for Windows. The utility will help us determine the health and SMART status of your drive. I'd second what @popatim suggested and check the WD My Book warranty on our website.

Keep us posted & Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[idanperl]

Sounds like either the drive itself or the enclosure is having issues.
If its still under warranty then contact the manufacturer for an RMA.
If its not longer under warranty you might want to open the enclosure and try using the drive as an internal drive. Please be aware that not all enclosures have sata drives in them.

[strike][/strike]Warranty ran out

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, idanperl!

I'm sorry to hear about your malfunction issues with the WD My Book external. This model incorporates a hardware encryption which will prevent you from accessing the drive without the original enclosure, so I'd not recommend you to take it out. Can you share the SMART results from the Quick and Extended tests using the Data LifeGuard tool? This will help us determine if the problem is with the HDD itself or the external enclosure. Make sure you click on View SMART data above the HDD listing in the DLG utility.

Keep us updated!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[idanperl]

Hey there again, idanperl!

I'm sorry to hear about your malfunction issues with the WD My Book external. This model incorporates a hardware encryption which will prevent you from accessing the drive without the original enclosure, so I'd not recommend you to take it out. Can you share the SMART results from the Quick and Extended tests using the Data LifeGuard tool? This will help us determine if the problem is with the HDD itself or the external enclosure. Make sure you click on View SMART data above the HDD listing in the DLG utility.

Keep us updated!
SuperSoph_WD

Hello, thank you for the reply.
However, I repeat: the problem is that the computer does not recognize the external drive at all, so when running the Data Lifeguard tool, the external drive is not there and so I can't run the test.

Any other idea?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hello again, idanperl!

This sounds pretty unfortunate! Since the WD My Book doesn't appear in any of the computers that you connect the external drive to, I'm afraid that it might have failed. If you have any important data on it, I'd strongly recommend you to consider contacting a professional data recovery company for assistance. They would be your best bet on getting your files back.

You could also try taking the HDD out of the enclosure since it's no longer under warranty, but as I already mentioned, due to the full hardware encryption, you won't be able to access the data. However, you might be able to get the drive detected (via SATA) and test it using the DLG utility.

Keep us posted with the troubleshooting & good luck!
SuperSoph_WD