Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

CRISIS: WD ext HD disappears. WD support NO HELP

Mar 9, 2007 12:30AM PST

Does anyone have any great ideas about how to get data OFF of my ext hd? The hard drive (used successfully less than 1 month) is definitely bad, and WD Support says "Well if possible, move all data off the drive. At this point, you will need to have the drive replace."

Running WinXP, ext HD is Western Digital Passport 160gb. Have tried connecting ext HD to a desktop, just in case problem was with my laptop - no good. When I connect ext HD, all is good. then once I start to actually use the thing, it eventually stops responding so i disconnect ext hd, reconnect, and resume. generally, can copy a few files over to laptop before it stops, but with over 40gb already on there, i could be at this all year.

anyone have any ideas? I am furious about the cavalier attitude that WD is taking about my data!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
The usual next step is..
Mar 9, 2007 12:40AM PST

To pull the drive out of the case and apply directly to the forehead. Ahh no I mean the desktop's internal spare IDE connection.

If you're lucky, the PC will boot and see the drive and you can copy data off. If not then software like Zero Assumption Recovery (there's a demo) is tried.

-> About cavalier. Where is your backup copy? Hard disks will fail. You just don't know when.

Bob

- Collapse -
"Back up"... and regret ever buying this piece of...
Mar 9, 2007 12:48AM PST

... technology...

Sorry if it wasn't clear in the original post - this is an external hard drive. I certainly have had hard drives fail before, but I guess I figured that an external hard drive, expecially one used for 1 month, never bumped, in fact never traveled off of the desk wouldn't put me through this.

And, perhaps dumb questions, but what is the point of a 160gb ext hard drive if that has to be backed up as well?

- Collapse -
Please excuse me on this.
Mar 9, 2007 12:58AM PST

It's still a hard disk. And to add insult to injury I found I could corrupt many USB hard disks if they were used as supplied. Many come with the somewhat unstable FAT32 formatting so just a matter of writing to the drive and pulling the USB cable can have the entire contents vanish. It's a magic trick I use to show how unstable these devices are when fresh out of the box.

I proceed to the second magic trick of wiping the drive, then making a NTFS partition. While NTFS is not damage proof it certainly has faired better in my torture tests.

Do they tell you this? (no.)

-> You're right to think that it shouldn't need to be backed up but the truths remain that it's a hard disk and could be the stock fragile FAT32 formatting.

Good luck in recovery.

Bob

- Collapse -
NTFS - got it!
Mar 9, 2007 11:41PM PST

Well, my stinky little hard drive must've "understood" how angry I was - just after I posted, I managed to get ONE SOLID HOUR of the HD staying mounted! Have managed to recover most of the data, so i got that goin' for me. which is nice.

thanks a million (or maybe even 160gb?!) for your assistance, bob. since I don't think I'll be able to get my money back, guess I am stuck with getting a new WD HD. will reformat to NTFS the second I get it home! tangentially, do you have any opinions about one mfg or another? who makes the best ext HD?

jenni,
the soon-to-be NTFS magician

- Collapse -
My only preferences today are...
Mar 9, 2007 11:48PM PST

Hard disk cases that are well ventilated. I like a small quiet fan but if it's for some server room I don't wince at a louder fan that pushes more air.

At the office most USB drives are self assembled units. We get some drive on sale and then pick up some USB housing. All of us know what a screwdriver is so it's not very challenging to put the 2 parts together.

-> Let me share what I use to sync my stuff with my external drive. SYNCBACK (google.com) gets this done for me.

Bob

- Collapse -
Favorite mfg? Your own baaad self!
Mar 10, 2007 12:10AM PST

I like it. wish I had been daring enough to do that. Happy

another question - would you suggest that i replace the HD, or iyho would reformatting to NTFS suffice? suggestions on "reading material" on reformatting to NTFS? i see that in "my computer", if i right click on the hd and select "format", there is the option to reformat to NTFS - does that reformat the same as from cmd?

whoops, guess that is more than one question. but you'll bare with me, won't you, bob?
jenni,
the ever-curious

- Collapse -
To give the drive a fresh start I...
Mar 10, 2007 12:18AM PST

Use XP's Disk Management (see start, help...) and then remove the partition on said drive, create it fresh and let it quick format it.

If the drive is suspect I'll later test it. To manually start the disk scanner if your computer is formatted with the NTFS file system, run Chkdsk /f /r on the new drive letter (start, run, CMD and enter the command there. You must restart your computer before the disk scan begins. Be sure to have a spare hour for it to work.

Bob

- Collapse -
Sorry for the bad writing.
Mar 10, 2007 12:19AM PST

I copied some text in from other places and I didn't rewrite it.

Bob