Western Digital My Book Essential
- Thread starter kelack
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Thanks for that, just trying to find a better back up system than DVDs. Have just realised that there is a DVD under the sofa, been looking for it for months 
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kelack
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£100 down the drain 
:shake::shake:
Hard drive is faulty and has been since I got it apparently. It is recoverable but they can't do it.
They will replace it but they will throw the dead one away. Or I get the dead one to keep and try and recover the data from a specialist company but have to buy a new hard drive so that's £100 down the drain.
They won't however honour the deal from yesterday as they haven't been able to recover the data.
gutted
Waiting to hear what Western Digital say
:shake::shake:Hard drive is faulty and has been since I got it apparently. It is recoverable but they can't do it.
They will replace it but they will throw the dead one away. Or I get the dead one to keep and try and recover the data from a specialist company but have to buy a new hard drive so that's £100 down the drain.
They won't however honour the deal from yesterday as they haven't been able to recover the data.
guttedWaiting to hear what Western Digital say
IanC_UK
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i would say keep the old one, specially if they are going to throw it away, and see if you can get a proper data recovery company to look at it.
Its possible it may work if the drive is removed from the case and plugged directly into a pc as well, as it might be the electronics in the case that are broken not the drive itself (longshot but you never know
) !
Interested to know how they know it was faulty from the date you got it though
Its possible it may work if the drive is removed from the case and plugged directly into a pc as well, as it might be the electronics in the case that are broken not the drive itself (longshot but you never know
) ! Interested to know how they know it was faulty from the date you got it though
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kelack
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PC World removed it from the caddy and plugged it in directly which is how they knew it was the drive itself. I am going to keep it as at least I still have hope. If they throw it away, it's gone for good.
They said that they couldn't see any signs of overheating, or misuse or anything so they have assumed it was faulty frmo the start although it did work. There was a rattle when I took it out of the box but I don't know anythin about electronics and as it worked thought that it was normal.
Western Digital emailed me back after I had gone to the online support thing and gave the same advice, drive manager etc etc (not the taps and freezer bit though). I've emailed them and explained the whole thing so wait and see what they say.
Having a bad 24 hours. Ended up going to minor injuries yesterday as I had a pain in my shoulder and my thumb and first two fingers were numb so I'm in a sling with a trapped nerve in my shoulder so typing one handed and feeling ultra sorry for myself
They said that they couldn't see any signs of overheating, or misuse or anything so they have assumed it was faulty frmo the start although it did work. There was a rattle when I took it out of the box but I don't know anythin about electronics and as it worked thought that it was normal.
Western Digital emailed me back after I had gone to the online support thing and gave the same advice, drive manager etc etc (not the taps and freezer bit though). I've emailed them and explained the whole thing so wait and see what they say.
Having a bad 24 hours. Ended up going to minor injuries yesterday as I had a pain in my shoulder and my thumb and first two fingers were numb so I'm in a sling with a trapped nerve in my shoulder so typing one handed and feeling ultra sorry for myself
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kelack
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And argh crap - I had quite a lot of photos in my picasa albums but had a clean up a couple of weeks ago, just checked and have cleaned all too well
Definitely going to go the online back up route now although knowing my luck the company will go bust and lose all their sevres or something
Definitely going to go the online back up route now although knowing my luck the company will go bust and lose all their sevres or something
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kelack
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Well, Western Digital have emailed me back. It's under warranty until October2010 and I can send it to one of their approved recovery people and they'll get the data off then WD will replace it. I then spoke to a chap in the authorised recovery place in Tamworth and he said there's a 65% chance that they can. I'm not the first to have phoned up with this issue and with the response from PC World. It's going to cost £345 but I have about 18months to get it sent off etc. I'm going to bite the bullet and sell all my card making stuff. I have over 200 rubber stamps which I could probably get quite a bit for and quite a few boxes of stuff. I was going to use it to buy an L series but this is more important to me.
£345 is actually a good price. The last quote I heard for this job was £700+
I don't know if an online backup solution is more reliable or how cost effective it is. I'm sure they will have a disclaimer in the small print declining all responsibility if they lose everything or go out of business. I've suffered multiple failures and losses over the years before I built up a collection of photos and got my act together and my preference is still multiple hard drives - internal and external, and dvds. I think I'm secure now, and any loss will be down to my own inaction in not backing up in the first place.
As for hard drive reliability, I used to think Western and Seagate were the best but not any more. I've bought three of these MyBooks. One was dead within minutes of using it, and a second lasted a few weeks. I've had two (maybe three) Seagates fail within two to three years in the past two years. IBM weren't so good years ago and I stopped buying them. They are now Hitachi.
I've had two Freecom mobile external drives fail. One of these was on a holiday trip with 3/4 of the holiday on it. But it was a backup to another drive, so again expecting the worst paid off.
But the drives I heartily recommend that nobody buys are Maxtor. Over the past 10 years I have bought 15 of these (none recently though). Every single one has failed in under four years. Three out of these were doa. They used to offer a five year warranty, then for some reason dropped it down to one. I wonder why. A company who sell bigger hard drive upgrades and services for Tivos (hard drive television recorders) specifically state don't use Maxtor as they aren't reliable.
I hope you get your pictures back. I think you stand a better than 65% chance as it's probably just the heads not working rather than the discs damaged.
I don't know if an online backup solution is more reliable or how cost effective it is. I'm sure they will have a disclaimer in the small print declining all responsibility if they lose everything or go out of business. I've suffered multiple failures and losses over the years before I built up a collection of photos and got my act together and my preference is still multiple hard drives - internal and external, and dvds. I think I'm secure now, and any loss will be down to my own inaction in not backing up in the first place.
As for hard drive reliability, I used to think Western and Seagate were the best but not any more. I've bought three of these MyBooks. One was dead within minutes of using it, and a second lasted a few weeks. I've had two (maybe three) Seagates fail within two to three years in the past two years. IBM weren't so good years ago and I stopped buying them. They are now Hitachi.
I've had two Freecom mobile external drives fail. One of these was on a holiday trip with 3/4 of the holiday on it. But it was a backup to another drive, so again expecting the worst paid off.
But the drives I heartily recommend that nobody buys are Maxtor. Over the past 10 years I have bought 15 of these (none recently though). Every single one has failed in under four years. Three out of these were doa. They used to offer a five year warranty, then for some reason dropped it down to one. I wonder why. A company who sell bigger hard drive upgrades and services for Tivos (hard drive television recorders) specifically state don't use Maxtor as they aren't reliable.
I hope you get your pictures back. I think you stand a better than 65% chance as it's probably just the heads not working rather than the discs damaged.