Top 20 Western Digital 500GB My Book Pro-External 500 GB Hard Drive Questions & Answers

The motor is inside the sealed hard drive case. Replacing the mechanical motor is impossible without a clean room. Dust will destroy the drive. Try and transfer the data off of the drive as soon as possible. Then check the warranty status here: WD Support Warranty RMA Services

It must be formatted to FAT32 or ExFAT format. TV cannot read NTFS format.

All software should have been provided on the drive itself. You should be able to connect the drive to your computer and immediately be able to access the drive contents. Once you have opened the drive on your computer, there will be listed various programs to install to use your drive for backups and other purposes.

If your not getting any power use a multimeter on the hard drive power cord,, probe orientation doesn't really matter you just get a negative reading if it's reversed. One probe down the middle one of the metal on outside of power adapter. Can't get a probe down middle just stick a paper clip and just probe to that. If it is getting voltage then the dc jack inside the hard drive enclosure could have broken loose take something pointy and gently push the jack on the hard drive if it wiggles it's broken and needs to be re soldered. Comment back for more assistance if needed, General solutions below
Check the following

• With the drive plugged in on powered on place your hand on it should be able to feel it vibrating (if no its not getting power or dead)
• If power and vibrating put your ear to the drive (repeating and squealing are bad, crunching sound is generally ok)
• With the drive plugged in and it sounds ok and it's vibrating[platters are spinning] right click on "Computer"/"My Computer" select manage > Disk Management, locate your drive if it is listed try to initialize it

1. Right Click drive, properties, hardware tab, select drive, properties, volume tab and click populate

If it wont populate or doesn't show at all in storage manager at all either the drive itself is bad or the control in the external enclosure is bad. You can attempt to remove the drive from the enclosure and plug it in directly into the computer but this tends to void it's warranty. If the drive works however you can simply buy a new enclosure for about $12

Comment back if you need more assistance

try other usb port, or other computer and see whether the hdd is detected. If still not, try to go to device manager ( http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000833.htm ), and then assign a drive letter to the hdd. After that, try to access it from Computer, if not able to access it, format it (use quick format) and then use this program to recover your files.http://www.asoftech.com/adr/

You can try a free program like Recuva to save your data: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

A good choice for fast remote data recovery performed over the internet is: http://FreeDataRecovery.us

Another reasonably priced choice but you need to ship out the drive is: http://300dollardatarecovery.com

it sounds like a power issue check all leads attached to your external western digital make sure they are securely seated and are not faulty

click start control panel administrive tools ,computer management ,device manager look through all of your devices if you see a yellow question mark?or exclamation mark ! or red x
right click to reinstall drivers or
if you can see your usb but its not working
ports(com&lpt)right click update driver
sometimes the wires inside the cable will be damaged due to bending or stretching or placing heavy equipment upon the cable,
just replace the cable of the hard disk, when you plugged the external disk drive you got that windows could recognize the USB device change the cable everything should work fine again,

check the USB leads that attach to the motherboard usually red-white-green-black make sure they are securely seated and have no dust build up on them dust will cause static and a lot of unforeseen problems also make sure the computers Ram and Cmos battery are securely seatedif this fails to fix the problem you might have to install a usb 2 or 3 card they are cheap and easy to install you can buy these on Ebay very cheap hope this helps

It could be that it's formatted with an HFS+ filesystem, which is not natively recognized in windows. Open up the disk management and check the filesystem on the device. If it is HFS+, you can get it to be recognized by getting all the data off, formatting it with another filesystem (FAT32 or NTFS are recommended), then putting the data back on.

You need a data recovery service. This guy does remote data recovery and just asks for donations.

http://FreeDataRecovery.us

Right Click on My Computer, go to 'Manage'. A window should pop up and look on the left side and find 'Disk Management'. Check to see that your drive is see in there. If so, right click on your drive and go to 'Change Drive Letter and Path' and assign it a new drive letter (any letter thats not in use by another drive) and it should come up.
If you do not see your drive in Disk Manager, unplug your drive, restart your computer, and then once the computer is fully loaded, plug in your hard drive.

Set it to 12 volts. The polarity is + for the central pin, - for the outer pin. However, I doubt the amperage will suffice. I have the same box, and my adapter is rated 2A, that's 2000mA, almost 3 times the rating of your adapter. It may work with 800mA, but I suggest that you get a stronger adapter because insufficient wattage can cause the hard drive to fail soon: lower wattage means less energy to spin the platters, which can cause variable rotational speed which will cause the distance between read heads and platters to vary, and if this rotation falls below a certain point the heads may land onto the platters and cause irrecoverable damage. At that level of precision mechanics, a head landing onto the platters is like dragging an apartment building over a road. So, I'd suggest you to get a stronger adapter. It's just not worth the risk. You should be able to find good apdapters on ebay or in any electronics store near by.

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Try Disk Warrior to test and repair your HD! It's an excellent sofware! If the problem persist you need to re-initialize your HD!

YoUr KeYbOaRd Is AlSo DeFeCtIve!

Mine came with an 12V DC, 1.5A, 18W adapter from Ktec. The same can be found on Amazon. take a look: Stop searching Start charging like pro I hope this was helpful. cheers

Yes, if you get one that has the appropriate specs. The universal adapter needs to be able to output the exact voltage (e.g., 12V), it needs to meet or exceed the amperage spec (common units are mA and A, 500 mA equals .5 A), and it needs the proper shape/size plug with matching polarity (for example, +/- on in/outside).

Visit Western Digital here to order a replacemant. 15 to 20 bucks..
http://store.westerndigital.com/store/wdus/en_US/DisplayCategoryProductListPage/parentCategoryID.13092600/categoryID.13096000

You should double check the correct one. but I think the 18 watt one will work for you.

You have to convert a GPT disk to MBR by using the clean command in DiskPart. See more details here:

http://www.aurul.com/500gb_hard_drive.htm

No, suicide's not necessary yet. The drive itself is almost certainly fine, but you've cooked the little circuit board inside the drive case with the interface electronics. It's possible to open the case and remove the drive. Then the drive can be installed into a new external case or installed into the computer as a secondary drive.

The WD case is not particularly easy to open. There are snap tabs that are hard to get to from outside, but it can be done. If you're not worried about reusing the case the job's a little easier. There are some how-to pictures and videos on the Web.

May I recommend backing up irreplaceable pictures and other data onto DVD or CD in the future? There's always the chance a hard drive can fail electrically or mechanically (even under normal conditions). It's dangerous to trust your only copy of data to one, so a backup is a good plan.

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An external storage-device has four major components:

* the USB cable

* the power-adapter

* the disk-drive inside the enclosure

* the USB-to-disk-drive adapter inside the enclosure.

One of these components has failed.

Try a different USB cable.

Try connecting to a different USB port on your computer.

Try connecting to a USB port on a different computer.

Take a "multi-meter" and measure both the voltage and amperage output from the AC adapter, and compare with the specifications on the label on the adapter.

Open the enclosure, and remove the disk-drive, and then connect it as a "slave" disk-drive in a desktop computer, to see if it works at all.

Purchase a new, compatible, disk-drive, and install it in the enclosure, to "revive" your external storage device.

Get the part-number and serial-number from the label on your disk-drive, and access the manufacturer's web-site, and use "check warranty status", to see if they will replace the device, at minimal cost to you.

Note that W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program -- you can buy a new W.D. device, through the W.D. web-site, at a significant discount.

There exist commercial "data recovery" services that can try to repair your device, just long-enough to rescue and copy your files. For example, see: https://services.seagate.com/index.aspx?lng=en-US for a "no data - no charge" guarantee.

The external storage device has several major components:

* USB cable

* external power-supply

* disk-drive inside the enclosure

* USB-to-disk-drive adapter inside the enclosure.

Try a different USB cable.
Try a different USB port on your computer.
Try a USB port on a different computer.

Take a multi-meter, and measure the output voltage/amperage of the power-supply,
and compare with the specifications on the label of the power-supply.

Open the enclosure, and remove the disk-drive, and attach it as a "slave" drive in a desktop computer, to see if bypassing the USB-to-disk-drive adapter bypasses the problem.

Look at the label on the disk-drive, for manufacturer, product-number, serial-number, and manufacture date. Access the manufacturer's web-site, and use "check warranty status" to see if the warranty still is valid. If so, the drive can be replaced, at minimal cost to you.

Buy a new, compatible, disk-drive, and install it in the enclosure, to "revive" your external storage device.

Search online for a professional "data recovery service". For a significant fee, they can repair your disk-drive, just long-enough to copy your files to a new disk-drive.

Note that W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program. Buy a new W.D. disk-drive through the W.D. web-site, at a significant discount.