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Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 22nd, 2015, 21:39

Some research shows that these drives have a common failure in the controller board, trying to figure out if I'm on the right track before I waste money on a replacement board or just scrap the drive and the data.

If I power cycle the drive, it works fine briefly, before throwing out input/output errors, and then finally not being recognized by my Arch Linux box. Process repeats if I power cycle the drive. I haven't heard any weird clicking behaviour from the drive (at least that I've noticed)

What's your vote, drive or controller? Thank you!

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 23rd, 2015, 2:06

Probably some media issues (bad sectors)

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 23rd, 2015, 9:35

regder wrote:Some research shows that these drives have a common failure in the controller board, trying to figure out if I'm on the right track before I waste money on a replacement board or just scrap the drive and the data.

If I power cycle the drive, it works fine briefly, before throwing out input/output errors, and then finally not being recognized by my Arch Linux box. Process repeats if I power cycle the drive. I haven't heard any weird clicking behaviour from the drive (at least that I've noticed)

What's your vote, drive or controller? Thank you!


not a controller problem for sure.
it could be bad sectors, FW or even 1/2 weak heads.

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 23rd, 2015, 11:31

IMO dont waste money on the PCB. Unlikely to be the culprit. You have a bit if functionality - check SMART.
My books depending on year of manufacturing use different drive families. Saddle G6 notorious for losing head(s). Dragonfly and Diablo mostly service area problems.

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 23rd, 2015, 22:32

Thanks for the advice!

Since the drive is half alive (at least for periods of time), any suggestions for how to get some of the data off it?

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 24th, 2015, 5:31

Try ddrescue. Since this is probably a one-off chance, consider using the services of a local Data Recovery Lab to ensure your data's safety.

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 24th, 2015, 15:33

kaxi wrote:Try ddrescue. Since this is probably a one-off chance, consider using the services of a local Data Recovery Lab to ensure your data's safety.


Agree, if it's no big deal if you lose the data then give ddrescue a shot to clone the drive to a known good one,

If the data is important then better to secure the services of a DR lab, it shouldn't be expensive at this stage.

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 24th, 2015, 16:43

If your data is worth my minimum price of $350 for a 2TB drive and you can get it to Guelph, I'd be happy to look at it for you.

Re: WD My Book Essential 2TB possibly dead, please help

July 24th, 2015, 17:49

regder wrote:Since the drive is half alive (at least for periods of time), any suggestions for how to get some of the data off it?

At the very least, examine the SMART report with smartmontools or similar. This will confirm whether the drive itself has physical problems or whether there is a problem with the enclosure or cabling (unlikely).
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