Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: Help! My external hard drive isn't responding

I had the same problem and it was in the switch or wiring connections of the switch arrangement in the casing body. The drive in mine was fine when I bought a new 3.5" casing. I had tried electonic connection sprays to see if it would overcome the soldering problem with the internal connections etc but for $A 24.95 inc postage problem solved.

i called Western Digital on the phone the other day and got a very competent support person.Just look on their website and use the phone. By the way, the backup button responds only if the WD software is installed for that purpose. If the LEDs are visible on the front of the drive, then sat least one of the software files is loaded into your applications folder. Go into that folder and find WD anywhere and make certain it is installed. I have no doubt that your files are on that drive. The backup software does not compress the files as far as I understand it. One merely has to open the folders on the drive via your PC and copy them to yet another drive if yoiu feel insecure about their safety. How about doing that first and then make certain the appropriate software is reinstalled onto the Win app folder and run it and see what happens. Good luck

If it is a usb device, add it with SMB and CFS if you ever decide to go with Linux.
SMB for a BSD.

Kailangan mo syang i back-up muna tapos i pormat mo ung external hard drive mo. kung ayaw parin sobok ka ibang external hardrive tapos palitan mo.

I am so puzzled why most desktop cases come with multiple drive bays. Usually 5 to 8 drivebays for hard drives. I have to set up RAID to be able to put in more than one hard drive or two. I am starinig at the empty bays left fallow. Why cant I use the spare drive bays instead of enclosures?????? I mean, why cant I just turn on and off the spare drives in those spare drive bays for back up purposes like I do with enclosures that I can plug in and out casually. I dont like the bulky enclosures that come with bulky transformers. I have to buy more expensive lighter enclosures that accept smaller 2 and half inch drives and dont require bulky transformers... Or Why cant the bulky 3 and half inch drive enclosures be hooked directly to the power supply in the desktop case. Case manufacturers can put in power outletes on outside surface of the case for external 3 and half inch drive enclosures so that I dont have to carry bulky transformer around with it.... I j u s t d o n t g e t i t!!! Maybe it is your transformer that failed or the power cord between your enclosure and the transformer is stratched or something.. but yes there is poorly made enclosures, but from Western Digital?? I doubt so. I think it is somehow compromised by misuse or damage somewhere in your enclosure system . Take a closer and careful look at the whole thing .. you may detect a short or something .look at the tiny circuit board inside the enclosure. Take closer look like a good technician would do. Or take it to Best Buy for service...

I had the same thing happen to me. It was either the USB cord or the power source cord. I bought a new IDE cable with 2 plugins-1 for the master Hard drive 2. to plug into the ext drive....Turn your external into an internal. Set the jumpers correctly. (I did spend $9.00 on e-bay for a bracket to mount the 2nd drive to my Dell) When I booted up I ran a chkdsk. It fixed bad sectors and I was able to access 5 YEARS of family pictures and music. I WILL NEVER USE AN EXTERNAL HD FOR ARCHIVING! ONLY TRANSFERRING!
and now I periodically BACK UP EVERYTHING!
Hope this helps.
Tom

Hi Helene

I cant respond to your problem with the drive. If your using an external drive you know more about them than I do. But maybe the other posts I have made will help you in some way or other people. I hope so!

Tom1M

Believe or not, I don't think the drive sounds nearly as bad as you think, but I am skeptical about repairing the buttons. Based upon what you said the only defect with this drive is that the buttons on the front that allow you to open the backup program don't work. I presume that you haven't found any reason to believe the actual drive is damaged. Almost everyone I have ever met agrees that these "one touch" backup buttons are a huge marketing gimmick. Millions of average people didn't find double clicking on their favorite backup utility confusing or just copying the folder with all their must retain stuff onto the external drive with Windows Explorer if their backup job was relatively simple. The retailers tend to charge more for this "feature" nevermind that you can easily set your machine to automatically open the exact same backup utility that WD provides you with. Either that or you could simply have Windows Explorer copy the folders that you want onto the drive. Either way you don't need the "easy" button to backup your computer.

Based upon Western Digital's Warranty policy page I am not sure whether WD will fix it and if they don't I question whether you want to attempt to fix it.

Citing the warranty from WD:

"WD will have no liability for any Product returned if WD determines that:

The product was stolen from WD.
The asserted defect:
is not present,
cannot reasonably be fixed because of damage occurring when the Product is in the possession of someone other than WD, or
is attributable to misuse, improper installation, alteration (including removing or obliterating labels and opening or removing external covers (unless authorized to do so by Western Digital or an authorized Service Center)), accident or mishandling while in the possession of someone other than WD."

If the damage is caused by misuse WD can legally reject warranty repair. Furthermore, if they don't fix it chances are the remaining 9 months on your warranty are likely to be voided if you attempt you own repair. Unless WD repairs it or someone they authorize to repair it the warranty is voided. Except for some of the data recovery firms like DriveSavers most anyone you are familiar with isn't an authorized repair facility. That being said a 200GB drive is pretty cheap to replace so you might not be too bothered by voiding the warranty. Provided that you are careful you shouldn't damage the drive inside.


Sources:
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#youruse
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#policy

I've never dissected a WD MyBook before, but based upon the case it doesn't look easy. According to some of the walkthoughs there are some hidden screws just as I expected. There are a few people with some instructions on how to do it:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1140329
http://rebootdaily.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-open-western-digital-my-book.html

I think that there are laptops where I could swap out the RAM faster than taking apart and putting back together WD MyBook. Unless you are careful about documenting your steps to disassemble you might have trouble getting it back together. Unless your time isn't worth much to you in my opinion I wouldn't worry about the buttons. If the little microswitches just died or for some reason aren't being touched by the plastic in front on them it is a pretty easy fix, but if it is on the logical board in the case I would say just deal with it. Provided that the hard drive diagnostic tools all say that the drive is functioning properly and doesn't have physical damage I wouldn't worry about a relatively petty issue because as I will get to in a moment you can easily have your drive automatically run your backup utility everytime you plug the drive in. I would go to WD's site and download their HDD diagnostics tools for your drive if you haven't already.

Just go to:

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp#diagutils

and pick your particular drive. It should automatically give you the right utility. Provided everything checks out I wouldn't worry about your data. If the utility reports any hardware damage I would copy everything that I don't have a copy of another another drive and call WD and have them replace it. HDD shouldn't die in under a year. If their own utility reports damage you shouldn't have too much trouble getting a warranty repair provided the drive doesn't show obvious abuse.

If I were you I would simply set your WD drive to automatically ask you if you want to run your backup utility every time you plug in the drive. Regardless of whether you want you are running Windows XP or Vista this trick should work.

Simply open Windows Explorer and go into the root directory of your Western Digital drive went it is pluged in(you should just see the drive letter and a \ ex. D:\, E:\, F:\, etc.) for . If there is anything after the \ keeping moving up until you are there.

Right click in some empty space on the right pane and click New>Text Document. Double Click on it. You should now be in Notepad.

Then paste this into the document:

[AutoRun]
OPEN=MYAPP.EXE
ICON=MYAPP.EXE
ACTION=Open my backup program

Replace MYAPP.EXE in both instances with where ever the full path to your backup program is located. Just go to the start menu and right click on the backup program and click properties. Under the word target you should see the full path. Now save the file. Now select the file to rename it and give it the name autorun.inf. Provided you did everything right the next time you plug in the WD drive you will be prompted to "Open my backup program."


It is possible to have it set it up to automatically bypass the prompt and go straight to the backup program, but this unfortunately would require you to repartition your drive, which if you want to do it safely and with a fairly user friendly program would cost you some money. I've owned a Lexar flash drive (JD Lighting) that was partitioned so that it appeared to be a CD (ISO 9660) and a standard FAT partition and hence since windows considered it a CD it would bypass the prompt. Without getting too detailed and technical Partition Commander ought to be able to do this if you want to spend the money, but I wouldn't spend the money just to save one click.

Bottom line, unless the drive is physically damaged or you use a shoddy partitioning utility to reproduce the autorun without the prompt trick that Lexar was using you shouldn't lose any data. Unless the casing appears damaged I wouldn't see the point in moving it to another enclosure.

Hi

To solve the problem since you just bought the hardrive is to take it back to WD than opening the casing because that might be against its warranty. Yes if the other hard drive is still functional you can format it and open the casing to use it as a harddrive converter because inside the casing is a normal hard drive that connects to IDE's.

Thanks
Wonder