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| Thread ID: 130987 | 2013-04-23 02:53:00 | Unable to access External USB Hard drive | Miami Steve (2128) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1338181 | 2013-04-23 02:53:00 | Separated this out from the previous External Hard Drive thread. I have a WD MyBook Essential (2TB) HDD, with a USB3 connection. Drive was last used about a year ago when I created backup images of 3 laptops (using EaseUs ToDo Backup Free). A couple of nights ago I had a need to restore some music files which had been deleted. (Fortunately I can reload from the original CD if required). The drive has been sitting on a shelf for the last year or so. When I fired it up and plugged it in, Windows identified a new device attached and set it up. The drive does NOT show in My Computer. I opened Computer Management and the drive was listed, but had 0% used and was listed as "uninitialised". I downloaded the latest version of WD SmartWare and fired it up. The drive showed, but with a padlock icon below it. Clicking the drive in SmartWare opened a window indicating the wrong password had been entered more than 5 times and the drive was locked. I followed the instructions to reset everything, but it will still not give the "Enter password" dialog. Not that I had set a password anyway. Having decided that the drive had probably got corrupted, when the wrong password dialog was next displayed, i clicked the 'Erase" confirmation checkbox and clicked the Erase buton. I immediately get a "Write Error" message. At this stage I decided to try initialising the drive through the computer management console. Right click the drive and select initialise results in an 'i/o error' message. Is the drive dead? Is it the controller (mentioned in the other thread), which handles encryption? Assuming the worst, what would be the recommendation for a (reliable) 3TB external drive. Also, is the EaseUs ToDo backup free the best option? Thanks in advance. OS is Windows 7 Ultimate on a Vaio F137 laptop. |
Miami Steve (2128) | ||
| 1338182 | 2013-04-23 10:09:00 | Not sure but this is what I would try first: www.techfleece.com |
zqwerty (97) | ||
| 1338183 | 2013-04-23 10:55:00 | The drive doesn't show up in My Computer, so I can't do any of that. | Miami Steve (2128) | ||
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