Have a problem with Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 500 GB external USB hard drive. This problem began right after the drive was pulled off a coffee table and fell (approx 15") to the floor. Was working fine until then.
Plugging into the USB port causes the hardware to be found, recognized as WD hard drive, shows up in Device Manager, shows as working properly with proper driver. But does not show in My Computer. Not listed in Explorer as an available drive.
When powered down and then back up, can hear the drive spinning, then quietly stop. Blue light comes on. Computer recognizes the hardware, but still not able to find in My Computer or Explorer.
Try freezing it. It sounds crazy, but hear me out... When I got the advice to freeze it, they said freezing also works when a drop causes premature crashing due to hardware failure. I'm a novice, but know enough to be dangerous, so I scrounged the internet trying to find a fix when this happened to me two weeks ago. Mine didn't fall, but started clicking due to hardware malfunction. I was devastated because of course I was too dumb (and cheap) to buy a second hard drive to back up the data on my first one. Lesson learned. Anyway, data recovery was 3 grand or more and I can't afford that so I took the advice of a bunch of people and tried the crazy idea of putting the dumb thing in the freezer. I took the case off using instructions I found on the web and then wrapped it in a white flour sack cloth to absorb moisture and put it in a ziplock in the freezer. After 24 hours freezing I tried again, nothing but obnoxious clicking. Going into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Device Manager I could see the drive but it said there were no partitions. Windows Explorer wouldn't assign a drive letter. I threw it back in the freezer for 10 days and on a whim last night tried again. The USB 2.0 port on my XP computer is broken and everyone told me not to use Vista if I could help it. So I took a USB hub and plugged it into my USB 1.1 port and then plugged the new hard drive in first and let it boot up. Then I took the frozen hard drive and plugged it in too and I was SHOCKED when Autoplay started running. Maybe the drivers and software from the good drive allowed the bad one to boot up. I don't know. I just know that it didn't work plugged in directly to the USB but it did via the hub good drive first.... Anyway, I have cords running out of the freezer into my laptop which is perched on a chair outside the freezer. I got all my pictures and priceless data off this drive overnight. It did stop a few times (says it can't find the file and the drive stops spinning) and I was able to unplug it, plug it back in and get it going again. It is SLOWER THAN MOLASSES and I would strongly suggest prioritizing your stuff so you get the most important data first because you don't know how long it will run, but I am thrilled beyond belief I got my pictures and home movies back. People told me I was crazy and stupid for freezing a hard drive, but it worked for me so I'm not going to question it. My data is on the new hard drive which I am immediately going to back up onto a second and I will live happily ever after because I didn't need to spend thousands to get my data back. Good luck!
Well i got a simple 320 gb external hard drive, and since the first month i had problems, i solve the recovery issue by opening the hard drive, and find it out, the inside was broken, and it got unplugged. so plugged it back and got my info. if your data its more important than 200dlls or less break the thing open, because if you claim the warranty they are not responsible for your information.
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im having the same issue please help. tried plugging into different ports and also reboooting computer
hey fixityrself,
but if i do freeze it, will i spoil my hard drive even further?
and if i do take off the cover, my warrenty will be voided.
what do you suggest. thanks.
almost I reinstall my main sata hard drive, but I did not remove the wd usb
now it shows uo in device manger as a disk drive rt next to mt internal sata drive and some times it will show up on task bar as in safely remove
THe drive will show while in properties as driver and will show use safely remove mode but in the population tab it show amount of disk space or allocated and un calculated the in reserve the big 0 mb available
thank you they are great drives Howard ROSE
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