Chosen Solution
My MyBook 3T Drive, less than 1 yr old, only used for Time Machine backups, refuses to power up now. Have no idea why; I haven’t even backedup that many times so it’s got plenty of space. I’ve tried different outlets, also subbed in the power cable from my older MyBook Studio, all to no avail! This is especially maddening since I have many externals, one from 2006 even, that I no longer use but still powers up! makes me think newer is less reliable - !! This really blows! so if I tear it down, what am I looking for? is there a way to access it w/o a power source? fyi, it’s barely 1 yr old - bought it in Aug 2016
update Talked to WD on the phone to verify they would replace the drive but not remove the data or send the old drive back. I said I didn’t care about the warranty, just the data, so he said just to remove the drive and buy a SATA cable to reconnect and obtain the data that way. WD also said take the bare-bones drive in and show to a tek to buy the propert SATA. I went to MicroCenter and the clerk in the Build Your Own dept showed me a case with a power cable and a new power board that would just plug into my hard drive (once I removed my power board) and that should do me. $19.99. I just now finished - took all of 10 mins or less. Was a snap. Just ran a diagnostic on the hard drive as yeah, I was concerned. Everything is fine. Apparently the power board (I don’t know what the tek term is but it’s the board where the power cord would connect) was bad in the old one. Very happy camper now !!
Have an old WD5000 2006 NAS drive that won’t power up. Removed the drive from the case and connected it inside my rack mount. Under Win 7 device manager, it’s reported, yet Win 7 isn’t initializing. No SATA expert, look like what was said about a proprietary interface could be positive. When all else fails, tear into the electronics. On the controller board, can follow 5/12 volts across a few caps, then one that is slightly bulging 2 volts. Going to replace the cap, see if the board comes back up, get my data and NEVER buy a WD product again :)
It can be connected to a PC via SATA once you remove it from the MY CLOUD case. However, took me a bit more reading. Those HD are formatted XFS as with Unix or Linux as system. Connecting it to, and mounting the drive under Linux, the drive would be directly readable. I went ahead and purchased a recovery package which, under one of three of licenses you can purchase, can read the XFS drive directly. Let it scan the drive, it will populate a directory with found files. From there just copy as normal over to a FAT32 Driver in the PC. There is also a license for Mac as well. It was $20 US a license, from a place in the UK. There is a trial mode to see first if indeed it will work for you. Was a breeze here. It was mentioned here, so that’s the reason I chose it. Raise Data Recovery. Good Luck!
My 500Gb WD My Book does not spin up anymore. The drive just clicks. I opened the case, removed the standard 3,5" SATA HDD and pugged it into a desktop. The drive works flawlessly. Then I plugged a small 2,5" SATA HDD into the empty WD case and it works. I assume the board inside the WD cannot power the 3,5" drive with enough power to spin-up, although my multimeter sees 12V on the SATA connector… So i got my data back, the HDD can be re-used in a desktop or another external enclosure and I confirm the WD board is a piece of XXX.
I went onto this site, because we have a WD external hard drive that won’t turn on when plugged in. We purchased it several years ago and transferred a bunch of files onto it for safe keeping. Over the several years, we have used it a handful of times and have stored it for safe keeping. Now, it won’t turn on! I’ve read this thread and will try purchasing a SATA cable (whatever that is!) and transfer the files to a different external hard drive. Thanks for the advice on never buying a WD again! As this was the first time we had done this, we went with the “cheapest” product. As you have stated, “you get what you pay for!”
