Question Me Again! Oh No! WD 6TB My Book Duo - Failed! Help!

needspractice

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Feb 6, 2013
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I have this:

WD 6TB My Book Duo Desktop RAID External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 - WDBLWE0060JCH-NESN

2 Bay, 6TB Personal Cloud Storage includes 2 x 3TB HDD
User selectable RAID 0/1 or JBOD lets you configure your drive for more speed (default setting: RAID 0), data protection (drive mirroring: RAID 1) or operate as two independent drives (JBOD)
High capacity external storage and backup; Ultra fast, optimized data transfer speeds; Protecting your data with multiple backup options
Complete backup solutions to secure your data from loss ; Integrated backup software, Cloud backup with Dropbox, System level backup
Speed and security with hardware encrypted RAID

...

One Drive Failed. The Other Drive is working. I already beat one of the drives into the Ground trying to get it to work. Its not coming back. However, one drive is fine.

The Drives were not in Raid format. They were separate 6TB drives for a total of 12TB in windows.

My question is how do I see the one drive that is still good? Its behind a controller, and when I just use one drive it does not show up on windows properly whether I use the WD controller or not. I mean if I take the drive out and use something else it still does not show up on Windows.

I am thinking because you have to use the WD controller to see this drive however, when one drive being broke it messes everything up with the WD controller not understanding what happened.

Is there any way to see or access what Data I have on the working drive without the bad drive?

Please Help!
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
The Drives were not in Raid format. They were separate 6TB drives for a total of 12TB in windows.
1 drive letter or 2?
One drive letter indicates 'not individual'.

Power OFF
Physically remove one.
Power ON.
Is the data still there on the connected drive?
If so...the one you disconnected is the failed one.
If not...well, you now know the answer.
 

needspractice

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Feb 6, 2013
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1 drive letter or 2?
One drive letter indicates 'not individual'.

Power OFF
Physically remove one.
Power ON.
Is the data still there on the connected drive?
If so...the one you disconnected is the failed one.
If not...well, you now know the answer.

There are two drives.

I believe in non raid format because when everything was working it showed up as 12TB and not 6TB.

Oh, my good point. I believe both drives connected showed up as one drive. What does that mean? How could it be raid if it was not duplicating the drives? I mean is there another RAID format?

I know which one failed because it was making all kinds of noises. That drive is done. However, there is another drive that works find in regards it spins up, seems like it connects to windows however, you can't see anything. If I connect the drive within the WD Housing or without nothing comes up on Windows.

Does this mean this DATA is lost permanently and nothing can be done? Is there not a chance that whatever was on this drive cannot be recovered? I mean were the Data Tables or Search Data shared between both drives and when one drive fails they both basically failed and there is nothing that can be done?

I mean I was hoping to have at least half of my Data available by somehow connecting the second drive that is not broken to the computer directly by pulling it out of the WD Housing and connecting it directly to the computer. However, like I said before whether the hard drive is in the housing alone without the broken drive or hooked up directly to the computer without the housing or the broken drive I get nothing. I mean it spins up like everything is working however, I can't see anything.

Maybe it was in some kind of Raid Format that was co-dependent but didn't share hard drive space?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Oh, my good point. I believe both drives connected showed up as one drive. What does that mean? How could it be raid if it was not duplicating the drives? I mean is there another RAID format?
Yes.
RAID 0, the drives are seen as a single volume. In this case, all 12TB.
Or, the not-quite-RAID of JBOD.

If it was a RAID 0, then all data is indeed lost.
The data is striped across all drives, and loss of one drive in an array means ALL the data is lost.
Like trying to recover the letter M, but it is literally cut in half, and one of those halves is gone. The remaining half is useless.


For the 'duplication' you're thinking of...that is RAID 1. Data is mirrored across the drives.
Lose one drive, and the data still exists on the other.
But with that, you would have only seen 6TB. Not the whole 12.
 

needspractice

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Feb 6, 2013
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Yes.
RAID 0, the drives are seen as a single volume. In this case, all 12TB.
Or, the not-quite-RAID of JBOD.

If it was a RAID 0, then all data is indeed lost.
The data is striped across all drives, and loss of one drive in an array means ALL the data is lost.
Like trying to recover the letter M, but it is literally cut in half, and one of those halves is gone. The remaining half is useless.


For the 'duplication' you're thinking of...that is RAID 1. Data is mirrored across the drives.
Lose one drive, and the data still exists on the other.
But with that, you would have only seen 6TB. Not the whole 12.

Aw. Well I guess this is a lost cause. Well at least I have some closure. I mean the silver lining is that this was non critical data however, data none the less. I wouldn't of minded having it however, not life altering.

Thank you very much for clarifying. I could of sworn I had a backup of this Data however, I did not. =(