Hello HDD Gurus.

Here's my little story (I hope, not so sad):
I have two exact same Western Digital portable MyPassport 1TB USB3 drive bought one year and a half ago, always used with care while carrying and disconnecting from Mac and PC… as long as Windows accepted a safe unmount, which it quite rarely but sometimes refused (w/o telling which application was holding a lock).
And all of a sudden, the famous beeping sound came every time I've been connecting one of them.

At first, I stayed unworried since convinced it was a lack of power: so I changed computer (all are USB2), cable (not tried a Y USB since I only have mini-USB2 Y cable), but I tried USB AC power supplies: the healthy one successfully spins up from both an iPhone charger and an iPad charger (which can provide a significantly higher current), whereas the faulty one fails and beeps on both. So my hope of this simple explanation disappeared.

I spent days reading all I found about disk failures, including on this forum, and came up with several possibilities, especially stuck platter (by heads or by itself) and damaged heads/preamplifier.
I am am tech guy, but focussed in electronics, not mechanical.

I unsuccessfully tried different orientations of the drive while connecting, although I couldn't figure out how the slight Coriolis effect of Earth spin could significantly affect the process. I also tried a lower temperature (since it affects everything in physics), with no better luck.

I'd love to hear the comments of you gurus, before I head to a DR guy with a thousand bucks, which I ultimately will, since I value what was probably on this disk like hell and I sadly belong to these crazy people who still try to live two times too fast and skip the wise backup advise... until today.

On PC, the faulty drive appears with its brand name in the list of storage disks in the peripheral manager, but is not assigned a drive letter. So definitely not a USB controller fault. Anyway, the power supply-only behavior difference also discarded this explanation.
The white LED keeps blinking all the time.

I recorded the sound of the two drives as follow to be as specific as possible:
- 0:00: healthy drive mounting
- 0:27: healthy drive unmounting
- 0:35: faulty drive 5 first starting attempts
- 0:52: faulty drive 2 first starting attempts, slowed down by a factor of 2
- 1:07: faulty drive sweep sound in first attempt, slowed down and further amplified
Of course, all is made louder to make it easier to analyze.
The link to this MP3 file is: http://dl.free.fr/owx3cMeJB

My try:
I am unsure if the faulty drive starts spinning or not, because :
- I do hear an increasing pitch "sweep" sound (repeated louder, at the very end of the record),
- but it matches no part of the healthy counterpart. It could be the sound of an SMPS (Switched Mode Power Supply) in normal or protection mode, especially because the motor would be stuck.
- Moreover, the (full) reference spin up sound is way longer and lower (in pitch).
I tend to identify the rhythmical clicks at the end of each trial as a head wandering all the way 5 times (so not stuck on the platter, but the platter could be stuck for another reason, but bearings are said very reliable on WD drives ?)
I am unsure of the 3 other sounds before, step motors or SMPS, especially the 3rd, loudest, famous beep.

That's all I can tell.
Again, thank you in advance for your knowledge, thoughts and help.
Peace,

Mat

Very strange sound; seems like the drive is spining up but trouble starts when heads start to move.
Sure your drive never got a shock when spinning?
I would not power up this drive any more to avoid further damage.
If you want you can send us the drive for a free diagnosis.

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Thanks for your answers.
I tried to upload the recording to the forum, but the MP3 extension was denied.
So here's another link: http://soundcloud.com/mathias_jazz/western-digital-mypassport/s-tEQjv
Best,

Mat

do not star this HDD, this sound is strange, but is very problable bad heads, you need a pro to test it,

but do not start HDD again, if you start it you would lose recovery chances.