My Book Essential 3tb

[Blaze]

I have the My book Essential 3tb WD drive and windows 7 laptop. It used to work perfectly except that there was a problem with spark coming out of the usb which was replaced by WD and I even got a replacement power supply but the problem is still there.

My hard drive's problem is once connected the fans/light comes on and CD Drive Unlocker appears as well. I double click it and enter my password which is accepted and I exit. This happens slowly almost like it's too much for the explorer to load. Nothing happens. The explorer itself is trying to load the disk which I guess is making windows slower. I exit the window and click my computer again and I see the disk it appears as local disk(H:). I double click it and all that happens is that windows is trying to open/load the disk and that's it. Eventually if I wait enough the computer windows goes white/freezes. I decided to go to other places in windows but it simply refuses to since it's still loading. Soon as I take the usb out the explorer works perfectly.

I tried it in another w7 laptop and the result was the same. I even tried it in an old desktop with windows XP. It was a little different. It did slow down but I could enter the inside the disk but nothing appeared at all. Anyway I even tried to Computer>right click 'Manage'> 'Disk Management. It gives the same not responding. The disk simply cannot be loaded. Anyway WD gave me another 3tb drive as a replacement. But sadly all my data is in that disk. I'm not sure if opening it up and connecting the drive with an enclosure itself would solve it given it's hardware encrypted and will void the warrant. I don't care about the warranty as long as I get the data back.

I tried recover data software and it froze when trying to scan and Find and Mount did not do anything either. Out of all this mess I learned my lesson to use a better backup solution but for now I just want to know if there is a chance to get the data back or not.

[pclab]

Hi

Probably you could have a problem with the enclosure. If sparks appear, there's some kind of electric problem with it.
Remove the HD from the enclosure (you might loose warranty, but it's your choise), and connect it directly to the PC.
Also check the HD PCB for burnt components.

[Blaze]

The sparks were gone once I replaced the USB drive.

I was thinking of removing the case but what about the hardware encryption?

Sure will look into the site.

[networks]

Swap drive to new enclosure if drives and USB interface are same you should be able to read the data.

[Blaze]

Swap drive to new enclosure if drives and USB interface are same you should be able to read the data.

All right I'll do this and come back to post my result.

[Blaze]

All right I did it and I got the same result. The USB interface looked the same as well.

I tried another software and it said it's RAW format with 0 disk space. Basically, any software I tried freezes the program when I try the My book drive.

[Vulcan]

@Blaze:

Unfortunately there are several places where your description is too unclear / ambiguous for me to be sure what you mean in those parts.

However some other parts of your description generally fit with the likely behaviour of Windows for (an unknown amount of) unreadable sectors on the original 3TB drive.

You need to decide whether you're going to try further DIY recovery, and take the risk that you might make the original drive unrecoverable (or at least much more expensive for a DR company), or pay for some professional help.

I'm not going to hand-hold you through the whole process, but if it was me attempting DIY without professional cloning equipment, I would be using appropriate Linux/Unix software (e.g. ddrescue) and direct SATA attachment, to try to clone the (encrypted) original disk, to the (also SATA-attached) replacement 3TB disk. Of course that's going to take a while, and due care needs to be taken of physical aspects like ESD etc. Obviously this means that you couldn't do the cloning using the laptops that you mentioned, as you would need at least 2 SATA ports and a bootable CD drive...

That cloning would do 2 things - it'll give a clue whether my guess about unreadable sectors is correct or not, and in many cases it'll be be able to read marginal sectors through using more retries than Windows does; and it'll produce a copy (not necessarily perfect, depending on the readability of the original) for any further experimentation which you choose to do, without further risk to your original disk. In fact depending on how it is used and the difficulty of reading any marginal sectors, ddrescue sometimes makes it look like all sectors on the source disk were readable (if you don't look for pauses during the cloning), when some were actually not readable by Windows, due to those limited Windows retries.

Other approaches to your problem are also possible - for example, it would be possible to scan the disk to check for unreadable sectors instead of cloning it, but cloning effectively does a scan anyway and generates a copy for you, which is a "best practice" anyway. Some people may disagree with this approach...

Obviously the (still encrypted) clone target would then need to be attached via a working WD USB-SATA Initio board to do the decryption, before attempting to actually read / check the data using an OS.

There are risks with doing cloning as part of DIY (the most obvious, but not the only, one being getting the direction of the clone source & target correct), and you may want to practice using other unimportant disks first. If you are unlucky, the source (original) disk might die during the cloning. There are also risks of not doing cloning before DIY...

Also, ddrescue is not "one click" software, even if you are familiar with Linux/Unix, and while the typical default ddrescue commands are often partly successful, it can need interactive adjustments to the current command, for maximum success. Good DR companies have specialised cloning equipment, which is usually better than software-only cloning methods like ddrescue.

It's up to you how to proceed, based on the value of the data to you, and your confidence / skill / experience (which I don't know, and don't want to be responsible for). Your data, your choice

[dmarques]

Hi,

Is your data important?
If it is, the least you should be worried about is your box warranty.

So, if it's important, remove it from the box and check if the drive is ok.
If not, take it to a DR company for a proper diagnosis.

[Blaze]

@Blaze:

Unfortunately there are several places where your description is too unclear / ambiguous for me to be sure what you mean in those parts.

However some other parts of your description generally fit with the likely behaviour of Windows for (an unknown amount of) unreadable sectors on the original 3TB drive.

You need to decide whether you're going to try further DIY recovery, and take the risk that you might make the original drive unrecoverable (or at least much more expensive for a DR company), or pay for some professional help.

I'm not going to hand-hold you through the whole process, but if it was me attempting DIY without professional cloning equipment, I would be using appropriate Linux/Unix software (e.g. ddrescue) and direct SATA attachment, to try to clone the (encrypted) original disk, to the (also SATA-attached) replacement 3TB disk. Of course that's going to take a while, and due care needs to be taken of physical aspects like ESD etc. Obviously this means that you couldn't do the cloning using the laptops that you mentioned, as you would need at least 2 SATA ports and a bootable CD drive...

That cloning would do 2 things - it'll give a clue whether my guess about unreadable sectors is correct or not, and in many cases it'll be be able to read marginal sectors through using more retries than Windows does; and it'll produce a copy (not necessarily perfect, depending on the readability of the original) for any further experimentation which you choose to do, without further risk to your original disk. In fact depending on how it is used and the difficulty of reading any marginal sectors, ddrescue sometimes makes it look like all sectors on the source disk were readable (if you don't look for pauses during the cloning), when some were actually not readable by Windows, due to those limited Windows retries.

Other approaches to your problem are also possible - for example, it would be possible to scan the disk to check for unreadable sectors instead of cloning it, but cloning effectively does a scan anyway and generates a copy for you, which is a "best practice" anyway. Some people may disagree with this approach...

Obviously the (still encrypted) clone target would then need to be attached via a working WD USB-SATA Initio board to do the decryption, before attempting to actually read / check the data using an OS.

There are risks with doing cloning as part of DIY (the most obvious, but not the only, one being getting the direction of the clone source & target correct), and you may want to practice using other unimportant disks first. If you are unlucky, the source (original) disk might die during the cloning. There are also risks of not doing cloning before DIY...

Also, ddrescue is not "one click" software, even if you are familiar with Linux/Unix, and while the typical default ddrescue commands are often partly successful, it can need interactive adjustments to the current command, for maximum success. Good DR companies have specialised cloning equipment, which is usually better than software-only cloning methods like ddrescue.

It's up to you how to proceed, based on the value of the data to you, and your confidence / skill / experience (which I don't know, and don't want to be responsible for). Your data, your choice

Thanks.

Your right this is not something that I could do by myself.

I'm more annoyed by how it just happened really.

I guess it's time to look/research for USB enclosure given the size of my data.

Hi,

Is your data important?
If it is, the least you should be worried about is your box warranty.

So, if it's important, remove it from the box and check if the drive is ok.
If not, take it to a DR company for a proper diagnosis.

Somewhere in the middle.

The drive is ok no physical damage. If it was then it would have been an simple option of take it to proper DR company or move on.

[Vulcan]

I guess it's time to look/research for USB enclosure given the size of my data. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure what you're thinking when you made that comment. If you were still talking about the cloning, you'll see that my recommendation was for both the clone source & target to be SATA-attached, in this specific case. I don't know how you were planning to later attach the USB-SATA decryption board to a USB disk...

The drive is ok no physical damage.

With respect, none of us know that the drive is OK (although perhaps you didn't mean exactly what you wrote?). The whole point of my explanation in my previous comment, was that the Windows behaviour which you described could be caused by an internal drive problem - i.e. it would fit with a drive which was not OK (and, as with any problem, the symptoms could degrade further).

I was previously basically saying the same thing as dmarques then summarised - decide on the importance of your data compared to the risks of DIY (and those risks are unfortunately difficult to estimate, as they depend on luck, skill, experience, available equipment etc.) and if your data is worth more than taking the risks of DIY, then use a DR company and don't do DIY. However if you want to continue doing DIY, then I've explained how I would approach it.

Given that the drive is not (yet?) totally unreadable (since Windows will sometimes show you a drive letter), then recovery costs by a reputable DR company should be cheaper now (if the drive can be successfully cloned by them), than if the symptoms subsequently degrade further and then require cleanroom work.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[Blaze]

I guess it's time to look/research for USB enclosure given the size of my data. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure what you're thinking when you made that comment. If you were still talking about the cloning, you'll see that my recommendation was for both the clone source & target to be SATA-attached, in this specific case. I don't know how you were planning to later attach the USB-SATA decryption board to a USB disk...

The drive is ok no physical damage.

With respect, none of us know that the drive is OK (although perhaps you didn't mean exactly what you wrote?). The whole point of my explanation in my previous comment, was that the Windows behaviour which you described could be caused by an internal drive problem - i.e. it would fit with a drive which was not OK (and, as with any problem, the symptoms could degrade further).

I was previously basically saying the same thing as dmarques then summarised - decide on the importance of your data compared to the risks of DIY (and those risks are unfortunately difficult to estimate, as they depend on luck, skill, experience, available equipment etc.) and if your data is worth more than taking the risks of DIY, then use a DR company and don't do DIY. However if you want to continue doing DIY, then I've explained how I would approach it.

Given that the drive is not (yet?) totally unreadable (since Windows will sometimes show you a drive letter), then recovery costs by a reputable DR company should be cheaper now (if the drive can be successfully cloned by them), than if the symptoms subsequently degrade further and then require cleanroom work.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

At the time I did not open up the case so I could not say for certain that there was no obvious physical damage.

All right I think it's better to try DR given teh difficulty. Thanks again for the advice.