source_
I had a bit of a scare this week. Despite working like a dream since purchase for the past few years, on Tuesday my WD MyBook HDD decided it was bored of being an external hard drive and wished to be a ninja, hiding itself and refusing to be recognized by my PC. This was especially alarming as I’d used it to transfer files literally the day previous. I use to backup just about everything, from music to film, photos to design work. I tried the usual disconnect-reconnect with no joy, as well as a couple of restarts with the same outcome.
A quick google search brought up an endless no. of pages of people with similar troubles (which was both assuring and disappointing). I tried all manner of suggestions from the articles and forums, including changing the cables, changing the usb ports, and even hooked it up to my 360 (which it has successfully in the past) to see if it worked on another machine.. but still got a big fat nothing of a response. The light was on, the drive was spinning but it wouldn’t reveal itself. My drive had become either stealthy or shy.
Just as I was about to have a full on panic, and attempt to disassemble the damn thing, I caught a single post that suggested issues could arise with voltage drops. Pondering this, I unplugged the drive from the extension splitter and put it straight into the wall socket. Bingo! Back online!
This is very odd, as I have always had it connected via an extension with no problem whatsoever. I can only deduce that as the drive gets older, it starts to get more sensitive to things like power and voltage, which can cause the drive to spin slower than usual. I spent the next couple of hours copying everything back onto a partition on my main drive. If its on its way out, I’ll need a backup.. of the backup.
So perhaps it wasn’t playing hide and seek after all.. perhaps the poor thing is just getting senile. Either way its only been a couple years. Anyone else have such experience? How long do I have before I have to undertake the technical equivalent of walking it down the end of the field with a shotgun, or will a nice format restore it’s youth?
No related posts.