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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 13, 2018 17:46:32 GMT -5
I have a WD Elements External Hard drive and I have never had problem one with it. I have owned it probably 4 years. Warranty expired in Feb. 2015. It is a WD Elements Portable 500 GB hard drive that is attached via USB. I "may have" had 100 GB of photos and documents on it, certainly no more than that, roughly 18 years so of pictures for sure. Today when I plugged it in the light flashed as usual. I went to My PC to open the drive and when I double clicked to open I got a spinning circle as usual but then the entire screen "greyed" and the circle kept spinning. Then the computer screen went to light blue, not your usual BSOD just a light blue screen. Stayed like this a few moments and then desktop reappeared. I again tried to open the drive but it would not open. So I went to "Safely Eject, etc." and ejected the drive. I plugged the drive back it but this time it was not recognized as being there at all. I could still eject it as usual but other than that nothing. When I plug it in I can also hear the drive clicking, this is new I have never heard the clicking before and of course the power light continually flashes. I have tried it on three computers....nothing. 
I am presuming this drive failed for some reason but no clue as to why. I also am presuming that the several thousand pictures and documents that were on there are lost for good. I do have most of the pictures on DVD's ( IF those work now) though I am sure there are some I will never see again.
Anybody else had anything like this happen or have any suggestions? I know there are recovery programs available but of course you have to actually be able to access where it is that you want to do the recovery and as of this afternoon none of my computers see this external drive at all.
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Post by Everton on Nov 13, 2018 19:14:08 GMT -5
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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 13, 2018 20:03:20 GMT -5
Thanks will give it a look.
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Post by budgall on Nov 13, 2018 20:06:39 GMT -5
If nothing else works, I would remove the drive from the case and attach it as another internal drive or with a USB to Sata/IDE cable or use a an Easy Doc (Kingwin is the brand name of the one I own). Hopefully it's the case being the problem and not the hard drive
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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 13, 2018 20:38:30 GMT -5
Since there is no way to actually open the case it is doubtful that can be done. No screws, no way at all to open it that either I or my husband can see. So that is a "no go".
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Post by budgall on Nov 14, 2018 1:11:54 GMT -5
The WD website has some suggestions to test the drive. As a last resort a hammer & chisel may open the case <G>.
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Post by Everton on Nov 14, 2018 6:36:45 GMT -5
Have you tried using an alternate USB cable ? If you are using a surge protector have you tried plugging directly into the wall socket instead? Device Manager - anything showing there ? Reliability Monitor reported anything ? You say even though you could not see the drive you could still eject it so it may be worth trying this app CrystalDiskInfo (free) Read about it here where there is a download link www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/
As I also have a WD Elements external drive I downloaded Crystal Disk Info and it showed the attached results immediately.
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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 14, 2018 9:27:11 GMT -5
Have you tried using an alternate USB cable ? If you are using a surge protector have you tried plugging directly into the wall socket instead? Device Manager - anything showing there ? Reliability Monitor reported anything ? You say even though you could not see the drive you could still eject it so it may be worth trying this app CrystalDiskInfo (free) Read about it here where there is a download link www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/
As I also have a WD Elements external drive I downloaded Crystal Disk Info and it showed the attached results immediately.
Plan to get a new cable, this is USB 3.0 and this is the only one of those I have so I'll have to buy a new one and try it but am doubtful that will make a difference, hope it will but still doubtful.
Device Manager shows nothing unusual, same for Reliability Monitor. Tried the Crystal Disk but it did not see the WD drive, but then your computer also can see the drive, mine of course cannot. 
Have gone through all suggestions on WD site, Nothing. My husband has quite a few hammers and chisels, we are choosing the ones to use this afternoon.  |
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Phil
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Post by Phil on Nov 14, 2018 10:15:53 GMT -5
This thread made me consider what I could/should do in a similar situation. Because of the size of the data (you say 100GB) the cloud is not a reasonable answer unless one were to pay for that much storage.
I believe I would be OK since I have a ITB 2nd internal hard drive on which most of my data is stored. What is on the external drive is a backup to that. While this solution may not be of help in this particular thread, it is a solution worthy of consideration for those of you whose only real backup is one external drive.
To the extent that Judy has DVDs with most of her missing data, I would bet that they would still be readable.
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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 14, 2018 10:26:59 GMT -5
This thread made me consider what I could/should do in a similar situation. Because of the size of the data (you say 100GB) the cloud is not a reasonable answer unless one were to pay for that much storage. To the extent that Judy has DVDs with most of her missing data, I would bet that they would still be readable. Yes, all of the DVD's are still readable. The one drawback to an additional internal drive is not all computers hold more than one drive. Mine do not because I use laptops. The internal drive is fixed inside that one computer while the external drive is portable and can be moved from computer to computer.
Obviously the type of drive choice is "to each his own" but as shown by my predicament, hard drives can fail whether internal or external.
Cloud storage is not that expensive. Google Cloud offers 200 GB for $29.00 a year and 2 T for $99 a year. MS One Drive offers 1 T for $69 per year. I am sure there are others.
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Phil
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Post by Phil on Nov 14, 2018 13:41:55 GMT -5
Then a 2nd external drive as a secondary backup should be about same cost as paid cloud storage and have the portabililty you need.
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Post by jholland1964 on Nov 14, 2018 17:43:25 GMT -5
Just remembered this cloud storage option that I had forgotten and maybe others are not aware of;
If you are an Amazon Prime member (which I am) you have access to FREE Unlimited Photo storage and Amazon Photos has no size restrictions for images either. So with Google Photos and Amazon I certainly do have good options.
EDIT: F.Y.I. I did look for a new cable this afternoon. Since we no longer have a Staples of Office Depot my choice of stores is limited. CVS & WalGreens both had USB cables but not the one I need. Wal-Mart (my LEAST favorite store on the planet) actually had NO computer USB cables for sale at all, much to my surprise, and the sales person looked as if I had asked her for the combination to the store safe when I asked her if they had a USB 3.0 Cable - A-Male to Micro-B cable. Then I just asked for a USB cable and...nothing. So I gave up.
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Paul D
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Post by Paul D on Nov 17, 2018 10:57:10 GMT -5
All our family photos are stored on my desktop hard drive. That entire machine is backed up nightly to an external HD (I use Lastpass) and the photos are also backed up weekly to another external HD, my wife's laptop and my laptop. All hard drives WILL eventually fail as sure as eggs is eggs, although hopefully in most cases it'll be after you dispose of the PC.
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rosom
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Post by rosom on Dec 10, 2018 13:19:31 GMT -5
Hello Judy,
That is a bummer not being able to access all your materials! Yes, all of us one time or another have had similar problems. I heard of a good trial, not sure since I haven't had the need to try it. The article I read said put the drive in the freezer for a couple hours and then try it! From my own experience, I have done some experiments on old junk drives. That click is the arm seeking the data and gets lost slamming back to home position. I assume that the chill of the freezer may slow it down enough to allow the worn bearings to possibly sink to the data. Worth a try, can't loose anything by it. Just in case it did recognize the drive, have some other storage ready as it may not work the second time if you have to look for other storage and bring it up again. Hope this works. There are other things of course that can cause it not to be recognized as you well know. I had good luck on one just adding a tiny bit of machine oil to the bearings of the spinning disk. It could be a dry bearing not allowing it to come up to proper speed. Good luck.
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Post by jholland1964 on Dec 10, 2018 16:18:41 GMT -5
Thanks for the suggestion but the "freeze the hard drive" trick is a very, very old suggestion. It comes from way back when temperatures could maybe affect hard drives but in today's world this just isn't the case. Thanks for trying to offer help though, this is why we love this forum because everybody tries to jump in and help. F.Y.I. I was able to locate most of my photos because I had backed them up on DVD-R's. I am now in the process of uploading them to both Amazon Photos and Google Photos so I will have three backups in the future. This will take awhile cause I had roughly 17 years of photos on that external hard drive! Here is information from PC World Magazine about this old trick of freezing a hard drive. Very interesting read; That old 'freezer trick' to save a hard drive doesn't work anymore |
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Vera
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Post by Vera on Dec 15, 2018 22:20:40 GMT -5
I am considering to get some of my photos printed. A millennium ago we had no computer and all photos were paper. I find that I still often look at my stack of photo albums and enjoy those memories they invoke. I hardly ever look at the photos on my computer. Hmmmmmm
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Post by jholland1964 on Dec 15, 2018 22:29:20 GMT -5
I am considering to get some of my photos printed. A millennium ago we had no computer and all photos were paper. I find that I still often look at my stack of photo albums and enjoy those memories they invoke. I hardly ever look at the photos on my computer. Hmmmmmm Oh I also have tons of printed photos. I have some family photo albums going back to the 1920's when my mother was a baby. Hard to keep them in decent condition though, the paper is so brittle. Those all are black & white, I have color photos from the 1960's and '70's that have faded so badly that some of the colors cannot be distinguished to be positive of the exact colors. Some of those I have scanned and fixed with my Adobe Photo Essentials and re-printed but to do that with all of them would take years. |
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Paul D
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Post by Paul D on Dec 16, 2018 1:06:55 GMT -5
We have scanned all our old photos that were worth the effort, in the knowledge that digital photos won't deteriorate. Many of my old photos were slides and I have now found that Agfa slides (which I used extensively) deteriorate far worse than Kodak slides.
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Vera
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Post by Vera on Dec 16, 2018 22:34:15 GMT -5
We also have box full of slides that we took in the 70th. They have moved with us all around the world and been dropped and scooped up. We really should get those digitized. Maybe some day I shall make an efford but we don’t have a projector any longer.
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Paul D
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Post by Paul D on Dec 17, 2018 2:28:13 GMT -5
We also have box full of slides that we took in the 70th. They have moved with us all around the world and been dropped and scooped up. We really should get those digitized. Maybe some day I shall make an efford but we don’t have a projector any longer. At that age they've probably deteriorated already. From bitter experience I wouldn't wait any longer. |
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