WD External HD Won't Power Up

[jwhjr]

I have one of the 250G Western Digital external hard drives that are the size of a small book. Last night, when I was trying to do my monthly backup of our 2 computers, it wouldn't power up. I've had it for less than 2 years and haven't had any issues at all before this. There is about 80G of the space used. I tried it in different outlets, both PC's etc. but nothing worked. I looked through the support and troubleshooting on their site, but I didn't find anything relevant. Has anyone experienced this issue, and if so were you able to get it working again?

[Sandmannd]

Is it powered with a power cable or through the usb port? I would check the power cable and the USB cable. Try using different ones if possible. Other than that, I'm not sure what to try.

Using an external drive is great to make sure you are backed up. I use that and also back my info up to DVD just incase. You didn't do anything wrong at all, I just like the extra insurance.

[jwhjr]

It has an external power source, and the USB connection is for the data transfer only. I don't think I have another power source for it, but I'll hunt around to see if I can find one to try.

[Sandmannd]

That would be my first try then. I don't like the all in one external drives for this reason. I usually buy a usb enclosure and then you can add whatever HDD you want. If you have issues with the enclosure you can get a new one or put the HDD in a PC to get the data off.

[jwhjr]

I tried a different power source, but I didn't have any luck. I pulled the whole thing apart to get the drive out, and I put it into my desktop as a second drive. It recognizes the drive, and I can view and open a majority of the files. It looks like the issue is there are some corrupted files on the drive. I have chkdsk working on fixing them now, and depending on the results I'll probably put it in a USB enclosure for now.

[Sandmannd]

If you have anti-virus sw I would run that on there as well. Glad to hear you could get into most of your files though. Try to defrag it when all is done.

[sparcebag]

I also have a My Book Essential Edition by Western Digital.When choosing which to purchase, in the comment area of their site there were statements siteing exactly your problem,THEY JUST QUIT WORKING!! But I chose it cause of the price and there were other statements of how well they worked for years,you may have been one of the unlucky! Mines only a year old and working fine.

["another IT GUY"]

I'd recommend not buying WD drives. I had a brand new one that didn't last 4 months, then the company ordered me a new one to replace that one well that didn't work either after a month it went bad too. Now have a Lacie and it works great!!! Data recovery is expensive!!! Good Luck!