Hardware WD Essentials help needed.

[pwsincd]

I have an external WD essentials 1tb HDD , its been well and truly used over the past year or so , always being passed between the PC and the Wii . Eventually it errored , and couldnt be read by either device , a bit of persistance with the PC and i managed to rescue aprrox 300 gigs of the files before it became unreadable. I have tried to partiton / format in windows / easeUS , on macbook and the WD quick formatter tool all of which fail in one way or another , Windows just doesnt play , EaseUS hangs half way through any format i try , WD tool doesnt see it , macbook performs much in the same was easeUS . Im at a losss and am begining to think its doomed to trash , can any one help ?

 

[FAST6191]

Frankly if you have got the files off it and they are reasonably intact then you are doing well.

There are some lower level tools although how well they work under USB conditions is a matter for debate. You can pick up one for the given model/series of drive buried somewhere deep in the manufacturer's site, but if you are otherwise burning discs then I suggest you go for copies of Hiren's boot CD and UBCD as together they should cover most types of drive and in doing so you will get yourself a nice set of recovery discs at the same time.

I have never been the greatest fan of WD enclosures either- they tend not to support the drive that well and what role heat plays remains to be seen but they are not best ventilated either. You can pull it apart and possibly gain an IDE or SATA reader for your trouble though some newer external drives will prevent that. There is the possibility the adapter/controller has failed instead but it is rare enough that I do not really bother checking if I have a dying external drive cross my bench.

 

[pwsincd]

Yeah i did contemplate putting into the PC or trying another drive in the enclosure to eliminate either or , but i guess i kinda hoped someone would suggest some dumb issue i had overlooked . It seems to get to like 40% through a format before it collapses and hangs , i wondered if it was possible to maybe rescue say 300 gigs of space to use or really am i risking losing more info using an unstable drive ? . ill look into this hirens boot cd (i have seen this mentioned in other posts come to think of it) , would you have any direct links to assist ? tbh its just doin my head in .


Hirens downloading ....................