WD My Book experience

[Vlad]

Just to be clear when I mention my WD My Book, it's the first revision of the very first ones to come out. Early adopter FTW.

Anyway I've had it for quite some time and just recently it was showing all the signs of a dying hard drive. Since my data was already backed up off of it and onto another drive I decided to investigate it a bit further. When plugged in Windows plays the tone indicating a USB device has been connected but it would take nearly a full minute and a half before the drive even showed up. It appeared to just sit at idle until it would connect and show up. Format times were much longer than they should be and transfer speeds were poor at best.

Fearing the hard disk itself had given out I decided to pry it open to look at the inside. Why not? It wasn't going to do me any good in it's current state. Turns out the plastic cases only snap together but there is a screw hidden under a thin part in the case you have to dig out before it'll actually come apart. With the drive apart I found there wasn't much to them. A main PCB and a smaller one for the button and lights with a small IDE and power cable inside.

Typing in the warranty number on the WD site revealed it was a retail drive they put into a metal chassis with rubber washers and the controller board. It's warranty had expired in 2007 but WD offered a User Loyalty discount if I purchased a new drive from them which I thought was pretty cool.

The next plan of attack was since it was just a regular IDE drive to hook it up to my machine and see what it did. I grabbed WD's Data Life Guard program and installed the drive. It passed SMART and WD's own test with flying colors. The hard disk itself is just fine, the problem seems to lie with the controller board that made the IDE > USB jump. So when it all came down to it, my external drive just transitioned to an internal one.

I'm not even upset about it really, I have a WD Passport and 2 Seagate externals for backups. (Everyone keeps regular backups, right?) All in all it was actually kinda fun seeing what was inside and ending up with a good hard disk. Just goes to show that even if something seems broken doesn't always mean it's useless.

 

[Andrettigto]

So it sounds like you've junked the interface and kept the drive. I wonder how it would have responded to just a reformat? It's hard to blame the hardware knowing it still worked, but sluggishly.

Makes me a little worried as I store lots of stuff on my D-Link DNS323 with 2tb.

(Everyone keeps regular backups, right?)

Jeeez, that's why I'm worried

 

[JT64]

Just to be clear when I mention my WD My Book, it's the first revision of the very first ones to come out. Early adopter FTW.

Anyway I've had it for quite some time and just recently it was showing all the signs of a dying hard drive. Since my data was already backed up off of it and onto another drive I decided to investigate it a bit further. When plugged in Windows plays the tone indicating a USB device has been connected but it would take nearly a full minute and a half before the drive even showed up. It appeared to just sit at idle until it would connect and show up. Format times were much longer than they should be and transfer speeds were poor at best.

Fearing the hard disk itself had given out I decided to pry it open to look at the inside. Why not? It wasn't going to do me any good in it's current state. Turns out the plastic cases only snap together but there is a screw hidden under a thin part in the case you have to dig out before it'll actually come apart. With the drive apart I found there wasn't much to them. A main PCB and a smaller one for the button and lights with a small IDE and power cable inside.

Typing in the warranty number on the WD site revealed it was a retail drive they put into a metal chassis with rubber washers and the controller board. It's warranty had expired in 2007 but WD offered a User Loyalty discount if I purchased a new drive from them which I thought was pretty cool.

The next plan of attack was since it was just a regular IDE drive to hook it up to my machine and see what it did. I grabbed WD's Data Life Guard program and installed the drive. It passed SMART and WD's own test with flying colors. The hard disk itself is just fine, the problem seems to lie with the controller board that made the IDE > USB jump. So when it all came down to it, my external drive just transitioned to an internal one.

I'm not even upset about it really, I have a WD Passport and 2 Seagate externals for backups. (Everyone keeps regular backups, right?) All in all it was actually kinda fun seeing what was inside and ending up with a good hard disk. Just goes to show that even if something seems broken doesn't always mean it's useless.

I had a similar experience with a Maxtor One touch 500 GB, was in a bit of hurr forgot to unplug USB cable shifting computer. The contact shell snapped and shortcircuit the drive.

I opened the case picket out the sata thinking it might work direct in my computer if i just moved it. I put it in just to recognize the fact that the computer do not even recognize a drive attached.

Now the drive rest in an empty slot in computer unattached, while i dream about some magic resurrection. For a short while i was dreaming maybe the HD bios was in the case or it was strapped wrong. Just to find out the sata discs do not have any jumpers at all.

To bad 500 GB what a waste.
And by the way what is a backup, i think i heard about it in the dos days?



JT

 

[Vlad]

I wonder how it would have responded to just a reformat?

Format times were much longer than they should be

Tried that with different file systems a few different times, it shouldn't take 2+ hours to format a 160 GB drive.

It's hard to blame the hardware knowing it still worked, but sluggishly.

It was running at less than USB 1.0 speeds and slowly degrading further as time progressed but as a regular IDE hard drive it's running Win 7 flawlessly. As stated it was showing signs of the drive dying. I didn't just rip apart hardware with out diagnostics and trying to do something about it, hence the reformatting. There's only so much you can do with an external drive over USB when it malfunctions.

 

[Vlad]

The contact shell snapped and shortcircuit the drive.

Ouch, that's certainly a bummer of a loss, especially at 500 GB.

 

[kishy]

It's somewhat of a "known issue" with a lot of WD-sourced 2.5" external drives (I think yours is a 3.5" but the same principles probably apply) out there. I did some fairly extensive research before buying a 2.5" 320GB external for frequent use this year (requirement for school that we can store multiple VMware images plus courseware and coursework, and plus I'll use it for my own uses as well)

There were cheaper options but I went with a Seagate FreeAgent Go. Very nice little drive. However, my first one made a noise I didn't trust so I exchanged it...glad I did, the second one doesn't make the noise.

Normally I trust WD above all else but in this case the comments I found around the 'net suggested WD has had a lot of trouble with their external products, as evidenced by both WD products themselves and third parties who are using WD drives and electronics in their own products.

In general, what happens is exactly what you described...sluggish performance followed by an eventual complete failure. It seems to be heat related from what I've read.

Glad the drive itself remained usable though...certainly gives hope to anyone who has such an external that has "failed". Still not a good situation though.

 

[Vlad]

In general, what happens is exactly what you described...sluggish performance followed by an eventual complete failure. It seems to be heat related from what I've read.

Funny now that you mentioned that I looked at the cage/chassis that was inside the case and even though the plastic book outside has a lot of holes the inside is in such a way it nearly encases the drive and the controller board itself basically is enclosed in metal. On the other side of things I've never had an issue with my Passport, it's been pretty faithful although 2.5" drives are usually a little more resistant to heat issues.

 

[kishy]

Funny now that you mentioned that I looked at the cage/chassis that was inside the case and even though the plastic book outside has a lot of holes the inside is in such a way it nearly encases the drive and the controller board itself basically is enclosed in metal. On the other side of things I've never had an issue with my Passport, it's been pretty faithful although 2.5" drives are usually a little more resistant to heat issues.

Yeah, it would almost seem these companies think their technology is heatproof.

The thinking seems to be that the casing can act as a heatspreader, at least in the case of my Seagate. To an extent that works, but not for the circuit board and components on it, since they don't get to be in contact with the so-called "heatspreader". Someone made an 'oopsy' on that one.

 

[offensive_Jerk]

The newer ones are like that too. I opened mine up to take a look, and it was a standard sata notebook drive.