I purchased a Western Digital My Book Premium ES - on 09/2007 ... and I was not very happy to come home to it making strange noises ... almost as if it were drowning.

This thing is not that old!

I shut down my computer - and unplugged the hard drive, to give the drive some rest. Upon restarting, it is not listed as one of my drives on "My Computer" - and it is also not listed under "Disk Management".

My Device is listed as "WD My Book ES USB" under Device Manager... but under the Volumes tab, no data is able to be retrieved.

Attached a screen shot of Victoria ... with a scan of my devices. Anyone able to help me out? Be much appreciated, I don't want to lose any of my data =(

Dude, do you even know what you are saying?

Let me ask you: "I bought a drive, it did not sound right. Yet i loaded terabytes of data on it. Now it is gone. Backup, what is that?"

What would you tell me? There you go.




That is because the drive is not working. That is the WD USB controller.

Remove the drive and plug in directly to the motherboard to see if it works.

Don't worry about your data... At least, you will not lose more of it in future!

Unless you have a right equipment, you won't be able to figure out a problem with your drive.
You need a help of the pro.

As you mentioned that your drive was clicking for a long time. This could create more problems.

_________________
www.datarecoveryne.com

U could tried to did a surface scan using victoria, or using MHDD, and check how many sectors show , and wich type of error sector UNC, IDNF , etc

Regards

Thank you for the quick replies, everyone!



Remove the drive from the plastic casing?



How can you tell which device it is - under Victoria? I did a "scan" but not sure if its even there. Can you tell by the screenshot?

You are not well-versed with hard drives. Therefore, if you value your data and if you hope to see it some day, do not do anything further with it. Data Recovery companies only option.

If you don't value your data, yes, remove from the plastic casing, and connect the bare drive to your motherboard SATA/PATA port.

Use version 4.3 and post a screenshot.

Then again, i repeat, any attempts you do to fix this drive will only cost you more money in the long run.

What I don't understand... is after un-installing it in the Device Manager ... and plugging the hard drive back in -- my tray shoes that "it found new hardware and installed successfully"

yet...

victoria doesn't even see the drive. does not make sense to me

DTI Data Recovery just quoted me $1,595.00 to perform an "Invasive Recovery" on the drive. Yikes.

Average. You can ask some other DR for a quote but this is approx. what is asked for the case.

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

There is a saying in my language, and it roughly translates like this: "There is no point going to court (to sue someone) once your ass is fucked".

Remove this drive from its casing, and plug it directly to your motherboard's SATA/PATA port. See what will happen then. If possible, make a bootable cd, and run MHDD from there and see what comes up.

jgawlin, if its more easy for u to use, tried MHDD, after finished the scan u could got, how many sectors are defective´s, and wich type of sector are, u could use the windows version,even u could got some info, on the SMART parameters,

Regards

U have to know the problem with ur dive by remove the drive

from its casing and connect it directly to ur motherboard then

run ( MHDD or Victoria ) under DOS and see what will happen

Good Luck

Wow - Western Digital is a joke ... the drive only came with a 1 year warranty. I thought 5 years were standard? I guess you gotta learn the hard way. Figures the drive would fail less than a month after the warranty expired.

I'll be taking it apart soon.

Anyone have any suggestions - on which manufacturer makes the best drives?

Best manufacturers very often have worst customers. This is the problem.

Jgawlin, Beto and Unknown20010 gave you advice, in the above posts.

Click This if you cannot see them.

No ,
People Often Treat External Drives Like it has a SSd Drive in It LOL .Well It Had a HARDDDDDDDDDDDDDD DISCCCCCCCCCCCCC that ROTATESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

PS :i remember song that comes on in a psp modding software i have

_________________
Regards
Amarbir S Dhillon , Chandigarh Data Recovery Labs [India]
Logical,Semi Physical And Physical Data Recovery
Website-> http://www.chandigarhdatarecovery.com