[pooyall]

Its a WD10000E035 (1tb) desktop external hard drive, and all of a sudden, its started going funny...

when i connect it to my pc, the drive spins up, and the blue light starts flashing, but it takes 5 minutes before it is recognised by 'my computer'

once it shows up, double clicking it brings up a warning box saying that the drive is not formatted...

I have downloaded the WD diagnistics tool and this is what it shows... (it is drive G: )



the WD 'quick diag test' fails, and i am currently running the extended test, on which the estimated completion time is currently ~7100 minutes (295 days), and is going up at a rate of about a day every 3 seconds (i'm pressing cancel pretty soon) EDIT- Having said that it has now started running fast again and the est time is decreasing rapidly...


This is a backup drive primarily, so most of the contents are from my main pc, however there is about a month and a half's worth of files from while i was at uni, which i would really like to recover.

I dont know if anyone has dealt with a problem like this and might be able to offer some advice?

many thanks.

[Jack Hackett]

It could be that the enclosure's electronics are at fault. Have you tried removing the drive from its enclosure and installing internally in your PC?
It is not uncommon for the enclosure electronics to go a bit iffy, disappointingly.

[pooyall]

extended test stopped after an hour because too many bad sectors were detected...

at times though, the auto play feature would randomly pop up and start scanning before closing again.

i cant understand what can have gone so catastrophically wrong with this drive, it is only a few months old, and i always use the 'safely remove hardware' option...

is there any way i will be able to recover any of the data from the drive at this point?

if i look at the SMART status info, there are 1's in the following rows under the warranty column: (not sure if this means anything?)

- Raw Read Error Rate
- Spin Up Time
- Re-allocated Sector Count

Is my next step to definitely remove the drive from the case?

[Jack Hackett]

As the drive is only a few months old I suggest you return it to whom you purchased it from, its a duffer.
Yes, install it internally and if possible copy/backup the data on it ASAP then return it.