Replace Hdd In My Book World Edition Password

Below are some more fun Q&A about hard drive recovery. I have given what I think is the best solution to these problems. As always please leave a comment if you have a question or contact me directly at 727-345-9665 ext 236.Question:I have a 1TB Western Digital My book Hard drive.

Upgrade HDD in (white light) My Book World Edition Introduction. /dev/sdb - check the disk numbers with sfdisk -l and change (if necessary) the device names in the following scripts to /dev/sd? I reverted to rev 14 and killed the changes of user sorinacke (see history). Two weeks ago I wrote him a private message about his changes but. Smooth you been played rar. Macs have a reputation for being hard to upgrade or repair, but that isn’t always true. The hard drive (or SSD) is one component that you often can replace yourself, especially in older Macs. Let’s look at how to find out if you can replace yours.

When I plug it in to either the USB or FireWire ports the computer detects and the instillation wizard pops up.I follow the wizard steps and it says “successfully installed” but I cannot find my hard drive.-My USB drives all work and I have other hard drives on the computer-It says “you may safely remove hardware” in the task bar-I’ve tried it on a different computer and had the same resultAnswer:So this gets a little tricky because just because “My Computer” isn’t seeing the drive it does not mean the computer is not seeing the drive. You would need to go to disk management and then see if it is reporting as a mass storage device in the machine. If it is then it is likely that the drives problem is a MBR (master boot record/partition record) problem that can easily be fixed with something like a remote recovery. The other option is to run data recovery software on it and you should be able to tree the hard drive, move the files off, repartition/reformat, and move the data back.

If it is not being seen in disk management then it is likely a communication problem with the USB enclosure (box holding the hard drive) and the computer. Usually popping the enclosure open and then slaving it or putting it in a new enclosure fixes that problem.Question:I bought a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1TB External Hard Drive in July ’09. I moved ALL my music, photos and personal files onto this hard drive. My CD-ROM drives quit working right before I got this.so I had not gotten around to “backing them up” on discs. STUPID-I KNOW!!!!2 weeks ago it just quit working.

I used it in the morning and in the afternoon, it wouldn’t work. It appears that it isn’t getting any (sufficient) power. It does not show up as an available drive when it’s plugged in.Is there ANY POSSIBLE way for me to get my files off of this thing? I plan on sending it in to get it warranted-but I want to recover my files first.Answer:Ok, so like the above user he eludes to the face that it just isn’t showing up. It really could be all of the above fixes.

My guess would be that if he wanted to get permission from Western Digital to pop open the enclosure he would be able to rule out the insufficient power problem. My guess would again be that the chassis has gone bad since this a very common problem. I always say that a My Book is a good product but only if you are going to plug it in just to back up and then leave it off most times. If you want an external device you can run all the time the best course of action would be to buy a high end USB enclosure and a hard drive in the size you want and build your own.

This will give you the option to install fans in it as well as be sure it has good power to the hard drive. Heat is one of the major causes of.Tags. I have a LaCie 1TB extreme w/triple interface less than 2 years old. It was working fine the last time I used it (several months ago). Now I can not see an icon with either of my two computers (powerbook and macbook). Neither Disk Warrior or Disk Utilities see it either. I ordered a new power cord from LaCie which did not help.

I have tried accessing it using USB and Firewire. Neither work. The light comes on, it never goes to solid — just flickers) and I hear spinning but no scary noises. Any suggestions?

I’m feeling desperate!Thanks. Hello, I first want to say that this is a great site. Im sure y’all help out a lot of people. I also want to ask a question. Okay I hope I can explain this right. I turned off my computer last night and I try to start it up today.

Well as soon as it starts to boot Windows XP PROFESSIONAL will not load. I get a prompt that say:windowssystem32configsystem missing or corrupt. I try to get it going in safe mode but it gives me the same prompt. Now i understand that its missing a file so it cant go further but What I I dotn know is how did i lose this file. Most importantly I need to get the data off my C DRIVE. I stupidly didnt back up my data and now I m loosing my mind. Can you please tell me how I can get windows up and runing and more importantly how can i retrieve my data.

PLEASE HELP!!! Thanks for ur time-michelle.

Similar to the first two questions I have 2 WD My Book USB external hard drives, a 500 GB and a 1 TB. When I plug them in the Driver Softward Installation runs and tells me it successfully installed the software drivers, but it installs USB Mass Storage Device and “WD”. It used to install USB Mass Storage Device and something like My Book with some numbers. My Computer doesn’t “see” the drive, Disk Manager tells me the drive needs to be initialized but when I try to initialize I get the error message “Incorrect Function”. I don’t have any data on the drives I can not afford to loose.

WD tells me the “drive interface” has failed on both drives, at the same time!Is the “drive interface” something that can be replaced or repaired by putting the drives in a new box with a new USB connector, or are my drives toast?Thanks,Roy. Here’s another drive that won’t show up.

WD told me that it was insufficient power and will send me a new power plug. The tech lady also told me that i SHOULD (yes) plug my hard drive power directly into the wall outlet in the future and not use any surge protectors or backup supply. I thought I was being pranked or something.I bought a new case and dropped it in. It says that it installed new software, but won’t let me install any drivers because it doesn’t see the drive. Has anyone had any luck with finding a solution?. I’m unable to retrieve the information I saved on to my WD My Book Essential Edition (WD5000P032) 500GB several months ago! When plugged in, it doesn’t power up at all!

No blue (power) light! I plugged it in to various other outlets to ensure that it wasn’t the power source, but the same results!

Nothing comes on, at all! All I want is to retrieve the information I saved on itpictures, documents! Thereafter, it can be recycled!Ironically, I’ve always heard that it’s important to have a “backup” (External drive) of all important files, etc. When steps were taken to do exactly that,now the External Drive “acts ups”!The most I’ve done in terms of “recovery attempts” has been plugging the cord into various outlets only to get the same resultNOTHING!!!ANY assistance you can provide me to help me retrieve my information is greatly appreciated, in advance!Sincerely, EDEEZ. Connecting the drive via USB or directly to the MB won’t work for MB Essential; the drive is encoded with a data key through the USB control board. Unless you get the chip u2 from the original board and swap it to the new donor board, you’ll never gain access to your data.

You willbe able to recover many of the files from the drive using software like Wondershare, made specifically for WD drives, but it only pulls data from the drive, it doesn’t decrypt it of repair it; you will still need a decoder for many of the more complex files program files – as opposed to those that are merely pictures, or graphics, etc. I have 2 Western Digital Usb drives 1tb. They both failed thet same day within minutes of each other.

They were dead. After doing some research I learned that there is a diode that commonly fails. It is 06bo3a. Can’t find out if it is a Protection diode or a zener.

This diode is on the pc board on the drive. When I disassembled the drive (using a plastic wedge to separate the housing). I removed then USB interface. When I plugged in the 12v dc supply and the usb cable to the computer the led light came on as usual when I plugged the interface(bridge board) back on the drive connector the light goes outt. This indicated to me the board on the drive was shorted.

After removing the four screws holding it down to the drive connectors, I turn it over and tested the diode on the edge of the board near the connector. It was shorted. I removed the diode.

The drive now works. Only issue is there is no protection for the drive without this diode. There are two of these diodes on the board. I think one is for the 12v and the other is for 5v input power. This makes me believe that they are not zeners (regulation diodes).

Most likely protection diode. I will use the other diode on one board to make one good board. Then use that board on each drive to back up the data to new drives. Hope this helps. Worked fine, 3 months old, formatted my PC and hooked it back on, ran the setup “WD SmartWare”rnthis works, my pc shows Drive L, but can not read it.

(AT all)Tried to format it in: My comp. Manage Disk ManagementHere it shows as RAW (all the other drives as NTFS) tried to format but it won’t. Tried quick format, but it won’t. Tried it in Partition Magic to format, but it won’t. Tried it in My computer, click L drive and it asks for format, but it won’t.What has happened to my drive, I am a Professional photographer and it has ALL!!!! My photos on it of the last 3 months.

(Yes I do have a copy of these on my internal HDD and one more I just want my files back before sending it off to warrantee)(made back up to this disk, before formatting HDD)Please help. Joyce, Let’s thank the heavens you were not able to format the drive! Your data is still there, but the partition (or boot record) has been shot. We have software called Recover It All that can recover your files. The trick is going to be in getting the software to see the drive.

You may have to take it out of the case and hook it up directly. Here is a link to Recover It AllHere is how to slave a hard driveYou can call me as well +1-727-345-9665 or email me michael @ dtidata.comWe can do this remotely as well. I had a1 tb my book essential which i bought from a store it worked fine the day i bought it and then i move my data into it and then i turned it off, after a few days i tried to start it again with no luck the drive wont just boot up.well i got a replacement for the drive after waiting for 2 months but today as i received the new hard drive i was shocked to see that the new hard drive wont boot up too, i checked the adapter too and everything is fine.

Im really pissed and don’t know what to do will they provide me a replacement again. I had a WD external My BOOK 1 TB now the SATA USB controller on that had gone bad so I opened it and installed the drive directly to my Computer.Problem is I had a large 930 GB partion of FAT 32 on that which was accessible through USB interface but when I am connecting it to SATA the drive shows in Device Manager but not in my COmputer.In disk mangement it shows as Unallocated space, I know formating it will show the drive but I want to save the precious data on drive.So How??Any solution.Quick thought, If i connect it through a casing that are available in market of Sata to USb will it work? As it will be same interface again. Hi, i have a 1 TB external usb data storage, before i had gateway lap top with win vista and it was working very good with that computer. Around three months ago i bought dell laptop with win 7, and the data storage was working good at first month but after that the data storage start to stop working alot and everytime it gives me the messag ” format disk ” and now everytime i plug in the data storage to my computer always gives the same message and i cannot open it at all. So please help me if you can to get my data of that drive because i have important data on it.thank you. I bought a 1tb Western Digital external hard drive almost a year ago (July I think).

I put a password on it that only I would know.In february the usb port broke, then I recently purchased an enclosure case as well as SATA/IDE adapter, hoping that would solver my problem. However my hard drive showed up as unallocated data. I went to Best Buy where the genius there initialized my hard drive.Two questions: 1) Is there any way I can get into my hard drive like decrypting the password I have on it?2) Would there be any software that I could get full versions of for free to recover the data on my hard drive? Please let me know cause I’d really love to have my hard drive back. I bought my WD My Book for Mac a little over a month ago.

It’s been working great, but for some reason today it stopped working. I had the hard drive completely unplugged and when I plugged everything in like I always do the device did not show up on my computer. Usually it shows immediately on my screen, but I can’t find it anywhere, even if I specifically look on Disk Utility. When I initially plug everything in I can hear it configuring and working, but eventually it goes silent. The power/activity light blinks rapidly, faster than each second.

So I don’t understand why it isn’t showing up. It must have something to do with the USB, but I’m not sure what to do. Any ideas/solutions? Please and thank you.P.S. What is the warranty on it?

Can I send it to the manufacturer and get it replaced for free? What do I need to do?. I have a WD 500 GB external drive and am haveing many of the same problems as others. I finally managed to get my computer to recognize the drive by switching the firewire port I plug into and then bought a new external drive to switch everything over to. My problem now is that when i try to transfer data off the drive it starts the transfer then stalls and just sits there with windows saying its still transfering but really nothing is happening ie no change in how much data has been transfered after an hour. Any suggestions?.

I have a WD My Book Essential Edition (WD5000P032) 500GB, which I’ve owned for at least 3 years now and never had any problems with it until now because it was dropped on the carpet (about 16 inches) today. I have only used about half of the storage space.My main problem is that none of my 3 laptops are reading/recognizing it.

When I click on My Computer, the external drive is no longer detected by the computers. The blue light is still on, and when I initially plug it in through USB, I hear it working (no unusual sounds/clicks). The external drive is plugged in to the wall outlet and to my laptop via a USB (sorry I’m not a computer geek as evidenced here).What are my options? I have precious pictures and videos of my children, which I cannot lose. However, I am not currently in the position to spend thousands of dollars by taking it to a data recovery specialist. Are there other cheaper alternatives of recovering my data? I would greatly APPRECIATE any advice!!!!.

Hi – I bought a 1TB my book about 2 years ago and filled it up to around half way and it kept saying it was full at about 480 gig and wouldn`t let me copy more data on, I thought it might be a back up file issue although I couldn`t see where the back up data was so i copied everything onto another hard drive and formatted it.It said 931 gig free and i thought everything was ok except now I`m back up to around half way and it says it`s full again? There`s none of the original wd software on it, any help on how to fix it would be much appreciated.– Gabe. WD My Book Essential. New, worked for a couple weeks and quit. Plug power in – power light flashes on and goes off.

This happens with USB plugged in or without USB plugged in. I’ve been reading allot of cases with same or similar problems. Is there something wrong with these drives? Is it a firmware/software problem or a hardware problem? If it is replaced by WD, I am reluctant to send it in with mt data on it.

Is there anything I can do to get this thing up and running again? Is there a reset somewere or some procedure I can perform? All of the internal drives I purchased and installed were WD. This is giving me pause about WD reliability. So I have a Mybook 1TB (one of the earlier ones).

Although it seems to spin up, it’s wasn’t recognized by Win7 or OSX. So, I dismantled the unit (it’s 2 500gb drives, of course) and plugged the drives in to the SATA slots left on my desktop. DiskManagement now sees them but how do I (software) duplicate whatever arrangement that originally made these “look” like a single 1TB drive?Here’s the reading I get off Disk ManagementDisk 1: 200mb Healthy (EFI System Partition), 931.2 GB Healthy (primary partition)Disk 2: 465.76GB Unallocated. Stupid WD Mybook essential 1 TB it is now the second time the unit has all of a sudden when it is connected to the PC it can not be seen by the Pc’s USB port. When you pull the drive apart and connect it to Via Sata connector you will find the Master boot record has been corrupted and the drive is seen as unalicated. I have had to use file recovery program (GetDataBack for NTFS) to recover my data. I suspect and hope it is the Sata to USB connector causing the issue as it also seem to have software on the unit.

Contact WD and their are useless tried to redirect me to 3rd party recovery companies and hundred of $ to pay for a fix. I have the same problem as most of the people above, bought a WD 1TB Ext HD about 2 years ago, have it almost filled with irreplaceable data – and now the computer does not see it. It powers up, shows that it’s being installed (on my new computer) and shows in the device manager – it shows in the disk management area too but as unallocated and empty.

It was working fine until I moved about a month ago and now nothing. Can the data really be missing? I would love to run a program on this to retrieve my data but not sure how.

As I said, it’s full of important files ( I dumped everything off old computers onto this for the move). I get the same response using other computers and other versions of windows (xp, vista, and 7). There is also no drive letter associated with it in the disk management. I’m not a computer novice, but this is one headache I have not been able to solve. Well, I did have a tech guy remove it from the case and try it in another case, and still nothing. So I took it to geek squad and they did a level one and two on it (supposedly – don’t really know what that means?) and wanted to do a level 3 (clean room) recovery on it for $1600!

The catch there is if they recover even 1 file, it’s considered a success and you end up paying $1600 for a file. I am so devastated I don’t know what to do. They said they used recovery software (level 2) and could not recover anything. Should I just give up – it’s 10 years of data on there, I was transferring from my back up hd and my computer to this one because my computer was dyingand now this one is dead too? I am not computer savvy to this degree.does anyone have any other suggestions? I’ve read a lot of blogs about people who were unimpressed with Geek Squad and went home and recovered their own data, but I’m not sure I’m techy enough to do that. Please.all my photos (including ones from parents/grandparents) are on there – someone give me some hope.

Katlynn, no one should charge if they recover 1 file. Unless, you only need one file. It is impossible to say what is wrong with your hard drive. If you have data that is very important to you I don’t recommend trying to perform any type of recovery if the drive is mechanically or physically damaged. Software is meant for file system failure ie. Lost partitions, deleted files, quick format or even a few bad sectors.

If you would like give us a call and we will see if we can help you.1.866.438-6932. I have a 2TB “My Book Essential” USB 3.0 drive. This drive was bought to backup a failing Internal HDD on a Win7x64 desktop. First I formatted the My Book as NTFS using a different laptop with Win XP on it. All useful data was backed up by booting the desktop with Knoppix (bootable Linux). The My Book still works perfectly fine when connected to the Win XP laptop, shows all contents, pictures viewable and such.

After recieving the RMA replacement internal HDD for the desktop, and re-installing Win 7×64, I connected the WD My Book and it mounts on My Computer as “Local Disk” (different than the custom name I gave it when formatted) and is not accessible. Device manager shows no issues and reports it as “WD My Book 1140 USB Device.” Disk Management shows the File System as “Raw” and Healthy (Primary Partition). Without moving any wires, I reboot the Desktop into Knoppix, and the WD My Book drive works perfectly. Reboot into Win 7 x64, and it is still not working. Move it to XP laptop, it also works flawlessly there.Long story short, is there a way to get this drive to work in Win 7 x64?. The drive was previously assigned (F:), I just changed it to (P:), behavior does not change. Still shows up named as “Local Disk”, when the partition should have the distinct name I gave it.

At first, after changing drive letter, windows wanted to format the drive, I refused that. Now selecting to browse the drive gives a dialog box with the following text: “Location is not available”, “P: is not accessible” and “The parameter is not correct.” This is the same dialog box it gave when it was (F:). The first thing I did was I formatted the My Book as NTFS using a laptop with Win XP on it.Also, everything is USB2.0, I have no devices with USB3.0 ports, though this drive is USB3.0. Right now, I will probably back everything up from the MyBook to the 1TB internal drive (using knoppix to transfer the files). Once I build a new computer that has a USB3.0 port, I will try this drive on that with Win7x64. If it is still not recognized, I will format the ‘raw’ partition that shows up in Win7 and test to see if it is then recognizable in knoppix and WinXP. Hopefully this fixes it.

FYI, I got it to work by backing up all the data from within knoppix (bootable dvd linux) onto the 1tb drive, then booting back into win7x64. From there I deleted the raw partition and re-created one large partition, then formatted.

All using windows build in disk management (right click my computer – manage). I then ran the long surface check. I restored all the data back on to the HDD. All this was done with only USB2.0 ports. The drive has been working just fine ever since.Also, I have since built a new computer with USB3.0 ports, and this drive works great with 60mb/s sustained at all times, sometimes a steady 100mb/s. The new computer only has a tiny SSD and this 2TB “My Book Essential” USB 3.0 drive, so I installed Steam onto this USB drive, along with the many games, and it works as if it was installed on the system drive.

The drawback to this is that I can never ‘safely remove’ it, so I have to shutdown the computer to be certain it’s safe to remove. This is not a big deal since the SSD provides speedy boot/shutdown. HI everyone, got same problem, i buy a WD Mybook essential 1TB USB3.0 and i used it for a months.

The first problem i got is when i open the folder inside WDmybook the folder is empty but when i restart everything it will back to normal. Then after following days when i open my PC, mybook cant be open, “drive F:” appeared instead of mybook drive. When i click the drive it cant be open ” Application not found”.

What shoul i do. All my important files are stored there. Please help me. Heres my email “thechongkeys@yahoo.com”. I have a 1TB WD My Book. It reads the drive and I can access everything, but it occasionally, while plugged in, spontaneously disconnects and reconnects, sometimes giving me a “You need to format this disk message.” Its been disconnecting on and off now for a year and its driving me crazy. I don’t know if I can afford recovering the data and my internal doesn’t have enough room (laptop).I THINK it might be the USB to mini cord, but I do not know.

What do I do? Will replacing the USB-to-mini cord fix things? Please let me know right away!. I am trying to access a 2Tb MylifeBook, I am able to see the ‘shared drive’ and files, and I can download small files (like an mp3), but large video files (700M) seem to freeze up the system.

I’ve tried it over and over, on Windows XP and Windows 7 machines, I’ve turned off firewall (Zonealarm) and virus protect (MS Security Essentials), but still no download completion after 2 hrs and lockup of remote computer. Host IP is 25M upload, my IP is 7M download, and I have downloaded a 175M avi file before in about 3 to 5 minutes, so speed at either end is not a problem.

Whats more another user on an apple computer downloads movie files remotely without problems.Any suggestions, and thanks for your help,. Guys, as above I have a WD MyBook 2TB. After 1 year of working with it, it just stopped displaying any files. I tried various “partition recovery”applications, but none of them showed anything.Reconnecting, taking in and out from power, nothing worked. Drive light just stays lit and drive is un-discoverable in any utility.What I did was to:Case A’1. Open the case2.

Remove the harddrive3. Unscrew and unplug the mini USB3 controller from the SATA connector4. Plug the disk on an empty Lacinema(this is what I did) or USB harddisk dock5. ALL files are still there.Case B’Another problem is that these drives must be dealing with some heating issue. After drive was put back on its case, all contents also showed ok. My fault on this case was that I put it above another external drive which was getting too hot.

All the heat went thru MYbook and caused it being un-discoverable.After I put it alone on a desk surface, 10 minutes later, Windows scanned the drive and showed me its contents. To say the truth, all problems started when I put it on top of another external drive that was making hot the standing surface for MyBook. All the previous year I had it standing on the desk alone, I never had any problems of not seeing the drive’s contents.So to conclude: LEAVE ENOUGH AIR for the drive to GET COOL and you will be ok. However if this doesn’t work, put it on another USB2SATA case or inside your PC. Your data is NOT LOST. Don’t waste time with partition recovery apps and DON’T FORMAT the drive!Hope I helped,Peter.

I have disassembled the HDD from my WD My Book Essentials 2TB. After this, I put the HDD inside a SATA enclosure and connected on my notebook (MacBook Pro) but the osx showed that the HDD was not able to be read and asked me if I want to format it I tried on windows 7 without success either 🙁Please, how can I read my data (1.2TB) from this WD HDD? What should I do after connect using a SATA enclosure? Is it possible that my data have been encrypted by My Book Essential?I don’t know what’s happening on my HDD. Please, could anyone help me?Thanks in advance,Glad.

I recently received a 4 TB WD My book. I have spent the last few weeks placing a huge number of moves and PC games on it to save it safely. I recently restarted my windows 7 64 bit computer. Now only the light flashes for a while and it makes noises like the hard drive is reading the platter. It will show on my E drive and that’s it.

There are no files I can access or anything. I have about 2TB of files I really need. I know that opening the case will kill the warranty and usually bricks a WD. They are encrypted and will not work hooking them up.

Hi there, I am not all that tech savvy, so I apologize in advanceI have an older WD my book I’m not exactly sure what model. It’s all black and has a vertical light in the front that lights up blue.I am a photographer and have TONS of photos stored on this thing, amongst other files. A week or so ago, it started disconnecting itself, and then would pop up saying that I needed to unmount first, blah blah blah. Well shortly thereafter, when I’d unplug and reconnect it, there would be a popup saying that it had failed or was corrupt, I can’t remember the exact wording but it said I’d be able to access my files, but would not longer be able to save anything to it. Well, I just bought a replacement external hard drive in preparation to move my files from the my book over, but of course, now it won’t show up at all when I connect it. The light goes on and it sounds like it’s working, but it does not show up in finder on my mac.

I’ve tried connecting it to my laptop with no luck either. I also tried another USB cord with no success.It’s making me super anxious that I may have lost all of my images. PLEASE tell me there’s a way to retrieve them.Thanks for any help!.