Western Digital My Book Essential Edition (WDG1U5000N) 500 GB Hard Drive Logo
Posted on Dec 18, 2010
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My WD essential is not working, the light is still on but windows doesn't recognize the device. PLZ help

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  • Master 10,406 Answers
  • Posted on Dec 18, 2010
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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.

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Try each of these methods step by step if solved in any step get backup ASAP
the good news is: if the LED is ON you may have a chance

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unlike other brands which use laptop hard drives, that can be plugged into a PC directly, WD uses it's own board with access services on the hard and if the board is damaged you may have a serious problem.


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