500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

[muzician21]

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive? Would be a huge
Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Thanks for all assistance.

 

[Paul]

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive? Would be a huge
Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Thanks for all assistance.

This might be your device, here.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=355

You should read the reviews for products like this, before you
buy them. With products like this, you buy two of them, then
put the same files on both. I've heard of WD and Seagate "book"
style drives, failing in as little as a couple days (in some cases,
after the only copy of files has been moved to them). Thus,
my recommendation is to duplicate your file storage. One copy
stored on junk like this, is not enough.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136170

If it was mine, depending on how the casing is assembled, I'd transfer
the internal drive mechanism to the inside of my desktop computer.
My computer has both SATA and IDE interfaces, so I could connect
the drive and see if it responds. That would eliminate the external
adapter and a failure of the enclosure interface IC.

The shutting down, could be a power problem, and the stronger power
supply inside your desktop computer, may be able to power it while
you get the files off.

The only question, is how is the casing assembled ? Are there
screws you can remove to get inside, or is the drive entombed ?
You cannot be rough with the casing, if you expect to get your
data back.

(OMG... A nightmare...)
http://rebootdaily.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-open-western-digital-my-book.html

Paul

 

[Centre Parting]

Unless a drive has a decent volume of air moved across the PCB, it's doomed
to a short life.

USB caddies are death for any drive.
Unless the PCB has a fan on it, even a tower spells death - unless maybe the
drive sits on the floor of the tower rather than the confines of a 3.5" bay
.... and even then it'll struggle.
Best thing anyone can do for a caddied HDD, is give it it's freedom by
cutting the PCB side off the caddy box and attaching an 80mm fan (and
grille) - that or remove it from the caddy completely.


It doesn't get used that much.

 

[PeeCee]

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive? Would be a huge
Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Thanks for all assistance.

Is it this one?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=351

3 possibilities

1 The AC adaptor has died, check with a voltmeter or subsitute adaptor.

2 The Firewire electronics have died in the MyBook or your PC.
Try the unit on another PC and if possible another firewire unit on your PC.
(check the cable too)

3 The drive itself has died.
Check this by opening the case and mounting the drive inside your PC as a
slave drive.
You may have to add a PCI adaptor if it's SATA and you don't have SATA
inside your PC.

If this last one doesn't work then it's off to the data recovery
specialists.
If the drive does show up as a slave drive then you can make the backups you
should have made in the first place!!!!!!!!!!!

Best
Paul.

 

[muzician21]

This might be your device, here.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=355

Looks like it.

The only question, is how is the casing assembled ? Are there
screws you can remove to get inside, or is the drive entombed ?
You cannot be rough with the casing, if you expect to get your
data back.

(OMG... A nightmare...)http://rebootdaily.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-open-western-digital-m...

I appreciate it. They apparently changed the design somewhat on mine,
there is no screw such as referenced in that article but clearly it
must be possible to open the case. I would guess that it's otherwise
pretty much the same. I find there's some "wiggle" between the
junction of the vented spine section and the front/sides section. So
the trick is finding how they've got it locked together. I believe
it's outside the warranty period anyway which was probably just a
year, I think I've had it close to 2 years. It's easily worth the
price of another drive to get the files off this one.

 

[muzician21]

Yes it does, the switch is on the rear panel, but.....

Put it this way, there's not a switch I can turn to on/off. It's
internal and self actuated.

If as implied, you are powering it from the firewire connection

No, there's a separate external wall wart for power.

 

[PeeCee]

snip

Unless a drive has a decent volume of air moved across the PCB, it's
doomed to a short life.

snip

Google's research suggests otherwise:

From http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
<quote>
Contrary to previously reported results, we found
very little correlation between failure rates and either
elevated temperature or activity levels.
</quote>

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/
notes:
<quote>
there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than
might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively actually
fail more often than those running a little hot
</quote>


best
Paul.

 

[Centre Parting]

snip

snip

Google's research suggests otherwise:

From http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
<quote>
Contrary to previously reported results, we found
very little correlation between failure rates and either
elevated temperature or activity levels.
</quote>

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/18/massive-google-hard-drive-survey-turns-up-very-interesting-thing/
notes:
<quote>
there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates
than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively
actually fail more often than those running a little hot
</quote>


best
Paul.

Not my experience.

I used to run my drives fanless.
Had about 5 failures over 2 years.
Since then (about five years ago) I've been running another 5 or so with
fans .... and not a SINGLE failure.
All were and continue to be on high quality PSU's and mobo's.

Coincidence ?
Doubtful.

 

[PeeCee]

No, the OP stated it is a firewire drive, the link you posted is to a USB
drive...

OK so it's more likely this one
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=355

Same comments apply

P.

 

[PeeCee]

Not my experience.

I used to run my drives fanless.
Had about 5 failures over 2 years.
Since then (about five years ago) I've been running another 5 or so with
fans .... and not a SINGLE failure.
All were and continue to be on high quality PSU's and mobo's.

Coincidence ?
Doubtful.

<quote>
The data in this study are collected from a large number
of disk drives, deployed in several types of systems
across all of Google's services. More than one hundred
thousand disk drives were used for all the results presented
here.
</quote>

So your 10 drive 'experience' is more valid than the "more than one hundred
thousand' Google used in their research.
I don't think so.

Yes it is good practice to have good ventilation for a PC in general.
But freezing the balls of a Hard drives logic board is no guarantee it is
not going to die.
In fact if you 'read' the Google document and observe Figure 4, you should
note that cooling the drive to much is likely to 'increase' the failure
rate.

Paul.

 

[muzician21]

I got the drive free, it's a SATA drive, I hooked up one of the SATA
power connectors and the drive spins up but have to get a data cable
to see if the drive is accesible. The other SATA drive I have uses
some kind of different kind of cable with what they're calling a
legacy power connection.

 

[Centre Parting]

<quote>
The data in this study are collected from a large number
of disk drives, deployed in several types of systems
across all of Google's services. More than one hundred
thousand disk drives were used for all the results presented
here.
</quote>

So your 10 drive 'experience' is more valid than the "more than one
hundred thousand' Google used in their research.
I don't think so.

Yes it is good practice to have good ventilation for a PC in general.
But freezing the balls of a Hard drives logic board is no guarantee
it is not going to die.

Freezing ?
Even with a fan, they're still quite warm.

But ultimately, you appear to be unaware of the class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.
And totally oblivious to the vested commercial interests at play here.
This study was not conducted by any kind of academic institution - or
subject to any kind of peer review.

We have no knowledge of who funded it - or any way of qualifying its
veracity.
Anyone can claim to have conducted a massive study - and go on to draw
whatever conclusions they choose.

I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some bullshit
'study' (read : commercial propaganda).
Other than which, any overclocker will tell you that nothing kills a chip
faster than heat.
Try removing the heatsink from your GPU.
It's common sense, if nothing else.

 

[thanatoid]

oups.com:

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive
I've been using to store mostly video files for a big video
project. It doesn't have an on/off switch, it powers up
when power is first applied, goes dormant after a period of
inactivity and restarts when you try to access it. It's
worked flawlessly until today.

Without reading the rest, or the replies, I will just say one
thing.

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the $10
Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the same drive
inside that you could have put inside you machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations) are the
only way to backup safely.

 

[Rod Speed]

oups.com:


Without reading the rest, or the replies, I will just say one
thing.

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the $10
Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the same drive
inside that you could have put inside you machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations) are the only way to backup safely.

Wrong, as always.

 

[PeeCee]

class action suite bought by

the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.

I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a url?
Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other business
actions.

I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bullshit 'study'

Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing on a
Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14 installed.
This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the underneath
from new, it died at about 24 Months.
Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air over them
(again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage under the floppy
drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died, again at
about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a fan
blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

 

[Centre Parting]

class action suite bought by


I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other
business actions.




Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors from
doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to accept
things they cannot understand - a typically left-brain-dominant
characteristic that derives from an ability to see the bigger picture.
Techies are predominantly left-brain thinkers and as such, frequently
express frustration when unable to understand WHY something happens.

This is frequently manifest as an autistic-like, stubborn refusal to accept
what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest as a need to
prove the opposite of what they see before them, so irksome do they find
their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they lack the
vision and imagination required to see the wood for the trees.

Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed HDD's.
My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.

 

[Centre Parting]

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD
failures.
Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to
accept things they cannot understand - a typically left-brain-dominant
characteristic that derives from an ability

EDIT : - inability

to see the bigger picture.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive?

The power supply is external, but there are voltage regulators inside
the drive enclosure to convert the +12V from the power supply to +3.3V
and +5V used by the chips in the drive and the interface circuitry.

Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Data recovery is NOT included with the warranty, but you're supposed
to have an extra HD for backup anyway because computers can wipe out
tons of data in a hurry. Also a 1TB drive costs just $100, which is a
lot, lot less than the cheapest data recovery service.

 

[Aardvark]

class action suite

Made me think of a set of bedroom furniture built including straps and
chains and various appurtenances to facilitate lots of hot, dirty sex.

 

[Rod Speed]

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

Nope, they analysed the failures of THEIR OWN hard drives.