Re: Is this disk dead?
Hello. I am Russian, so my English may be not perfect enough. My suggestions: 1) The first thing to do with WD is to unmount the electronic board from the hermetic block, than clean the contact pads on the board, assemble back. See some videos on YouTube of how to do this. 2) The second thing is useful for all USB-powered drives: try to connect the drive to power adapter (5V only!) without "Quick Charge" (that gives 9V!) and listen to the sounds it emits with just power, without data exchange, mounting etc. 3) If everything is OK, then try connecting it to the computer and see SMART. 4) Even if that did not help, there is a chance to attach SATA and power jacks and try to communicate with the drive in that way. Personally I never did so, but my comrades did that successfully. One such drive had one bad head - so we were able to recover about 55% of the information from it. 25.08.2023, 10:57, "David Morrison" : A friend bought a WD Elements 2TB external portable disk, ie, USB powered. It worked ok for a day or two, then she could not get some files off it. She asked me to help. When I first plugged it in, it would mount. However, trying to copy files off it would start, and sometimes copy some files. Often, though, it would start copying then there would be a click from the drive, and it would just sit there, no error message, but not copying either. The disk was still spinning, as the vibration could be felt. So I started copying it using ddrescue to see if it could be recovered. bash-3.2# date ; ddrescue -n -f -s 2001GiB /dev/rdisk1 /dev/rdisk2 Jenni.log ; date After nearly two days, it is reporting this: Press Ctrl-C to interrupt ipos:4938 MB, non-trimmed: 4939 MB, current rate: 0 B/s opos:4938 MB, non-scraped:0 B, average rate: 0 B/s non-tried:1995 GB, bad-sector:0 B,error rate: 32768 B/s rescued:0 B, bad areas:0,run time: 1d 17h 59m pct rescued:0.00%, read errors: 75369, remaining time: n/a time since last successful read: n/a Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 5 (forwards) The fact that it is on pass 5 and has still not rescued anything at all makes me think that the fault is not on the disk surface, but somewhere in the electronics. If so, then I suspect I am unlikely to get anything off it. The way it is going, it looks like it will take several weeks to finish. If this is going to be fruitless, I might as well stop now. Does this analysis sound reasonable? Is there any chance of recovering anything? This is ddrescue 1.23. Cheers David
Re: Is this disk dead?
Thanks Adrien. I was thinking about that. However, I understand some of them are not SATA - the manufacturers put their own simplified (and cheaper) controller in the the case, so it is not clear how it could be connected to a computer. I could open the case to see, but that would void the warranty, and the owner may want to make a claim to get it replaced. Although maybe a replacement would be just as bad Cheers David On 25/8/2023 18:52, Adrien Cordonnier wrote: Hello David, The disk is probably dead as suggested by the clicking sound. If you really want to recover important data which are only on this disk, I suggest that you open the USB enclosure and connect the disk directly to the computer. The USB controllers are usually not the best to handle defective disks. Cheers, Adrien Le ven. 25 août 2023 à 10:56, David Morrison a écrit : A friend bought a WD Elements 2TB external portable disk, ie, USB powered. It worked ok for a day or two, then she could not get some files off it. She asked me to help. When I first plugged it in, it would mount. However, trying to copy files off it would start, and sometimes copy some files. Often, though, it would start copying then there would be a click from the drive, and it would just sit there, no error message, but not copying either. The disk was still spinning, as the vibration could be felt. So I started copying it using ddrescue to see if it could be recovered. bash-3.2# date ; ddrescue -n -f -s 2001GiB /dev/rdisk1 /dev/rdisk2 Jenni.log ; date After nearly two days, it is reporting this: Press Ctrl-C to interrupt ipos: 4938 MB, non-trimmed: 4939 MB, current rate: 0 B/s opos: 4938 MB, non-scraped: 0 B, average rate: 0 B/s non-tried: 1995 GB, bad-sector: 0 B, error rate: 32768 B/s rescued: 0 B, bad areas: 0, run time: 1d 17h 59m pct rescued: 0.00%, read errors: 75369, remaining time: n/a time since last successful read: n/a Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 5 (forwards) The fact that it is on pass 5 and has still not rescued anything at all makes me think that the fault is not on the disk surface, but somewhere in the electronics. If so, then I suspect I am unlikely to get anything off it. The way it is going, it looks like it will take several weeks to finish. If this is going to be fruitless, I might as well stop now. Does this analysis sound reasonable? Is there any chance of recovering anything? This is ddrescue 1.23. Cheers David
Re: Is this disk dead?
Hello David, The disk is probably dead as suggested by the clicking sound. If you really want to recover important data which are only on this disk, I suggest that you open the USB enclosure and connect the disk directly to the computer. The USB controllers are usually not the best to handle defective disks. Cheers, Adrien Le ven. 25 août 2023 à 10:56, David Morrison a écrit : > A friend bought a WD Elements 2TB external portable disk, ie, USB powered. > It worked ok for a day or two, then she could not get some files off it. > She asked me to help. > > When I first plugged it in, it would mount. However, trying to copy files > off it would start, and sometimes copy some files. Often, though, it would > start copying then there would be a click from the drive, and it would just > sit there, no error message, but not copying either. The disk was still > spinning, as the vibration could be felt. > > So I started copying it using ddrescue to see if it could be recovered. > > bash-3.2# date ; ddrescue -n -f -s 2001GiB /dev/rdisk1 /dev/rdisk2 > Jenni.log ; date > > After nearly two days, it is reporting this: > > Press Ctrl-C to interrupt > ipos:4938 MB, non-trimmed: 4939 MB, current rate: 0 B/s > opos:4938 MB, non-scraped:0 B, average rate: 0 B/s > non-tried:1995 GB, bad-sector:0 B,error rate: 32768 B/s >rescued:0 B, bad areas:0,run time: 1d 17h 59m > pct rescued:0.00%, read errors: 75369, remaining time: n/a >time since last successful read: n/a > Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 5 (forwards) > > The fact that it is on pass 5 and has still not rescued anything at all > makes me think that the fault is not on the disk surface, but somewhere in > the electronics. If so, then I suspect I am unlikely to get anything off it. > > The way it is going, it looks like it will take several weeks to finish. > If this is going to be fruitless, I might as well stop now. > > Does this analysis sound reasonable? Is there any chance of recovering > anything? > > This is ddrescue 1.23. > > Cheers > > David > > > > >
