help with MY Book external drive

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 12:06:03PM +0000, AN wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 11:13:21AM +0000, AN wrote:
>>> I just purchased a WD MY Book external USB disk, I reformatted in UFS and
>>> created a filesystem with sysinstall.  I was able to put data on it
>>> successfully, however overnite I had a power failure.  Now I am unable to
>>> mount the drive.  The blue light is on, so it seems to be getting power
>>> but the computer does not see it when I plug in the USB cable.  I can not
>>> run fsck because the system says /dev/da0s1d no such file or directory.
>>> I tried da0s1, da0s1c, and da0s1d no luck.  I also tried to plug the disk
>>> into another machine, same thing the disk is not recognized.  Is it
>>> totally gone?    Any help to recover this disk would be really
>>> appreciated.
>>
>> Possibly, especially if you plug it into another machine and experienced
>> the same problem.  When you plug the drive in, does the FreeBSD kernel
>> output anything?  If so, what all does it output?
>>
>> -- 
>> | Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
>> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
>> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
>> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>>
>
> Hi Jeremy:
>
> No messages from the kernel, nothing when I plug it in.

Then chances are the ATA-to-USB or SATA-to-USB controller that is
internal to the hard disk enclosure is dead.

> It is not making any 'clicking' sounds that you usually get when a
> drive dies.

"Clicking" is in no way shape or form "usual" for a drive failure; it's
just one of the hundred ways a drive can fail.  Most drives I've seen in
the past 5 years fail silently.

> I just  don't get it.  Maybe a power spike crushed it, but if so why
> is the light on?

This is really something you should be asking Western Digital.  :-) What
makes you think the power LED is at all related to the hard disk being
functional?  The power LED could be directly wired to the AC power
supply, in which case it just indicates the PSU works, and tells you
nothing about the status of the drive, or the controller that interfaces
with the drive.

Your options as I see them:

1) Call Western Digital and get a replacement MyBook; you will very
likely get a new MyBook, and your old hard disk/data will be gone
permanently,

2) Purchase a replacement MyBook.  Open it up, open yours up, and
swap the hard disks (e.g. your hard disk inside of the new MyBook
enclosure).  This will void your warranty on *both* MyBook products,
but will help determine if just the ATA/SATA-to-USB controller is
shot, or if the hard disk is shot,

3) Open your MyBook up, and remove the hard disk.  Attempt to hook the
disk directly to your PC via ATA or SATA; if it's an ATA 2.5" disk, you
may need to buy an adapter to make it work with standard 40 or 80-pin
IDE ribbon cables (make sure you note which is pin 1!  Some of those
adapters are non-keyed, so you could end up sticking pin 40 where pin 1
is, and destroy the PCB entirely)

I hope this situation has introduced you to the world of backups, and
why they need to be performed regularly.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |