External hdd (My Book Pro) dead after failed firmware upgrade, erased flash?

Hi. My My Book Pro 500GB was acting up earlier today. Not showing up in explorer/showing as unformatted.

Chkdsk detected, and tried to fix errors it found, but then the process died due to "unknown errors" or the likes.

I ran Active@ Partition Recovery, and it showed the file system as intact, but detected bad sectors at the very end of the disk.

Windows disk management showed the disk as not having a file system, just as a blank 500gb disk.

So, i downloaded the firmware upgrade util from the manufacturers homepage, and gave it a go (yes, i guess this was pretty stupid). Anyhow, the firmware upgrade seemed to be working, but then it failed in mid-upgrade (i think it was during the "erasing flash" procedure.

Now the drive is dead. It does not spin up when plugged in as it used to. When using the firewire to connect it, the computer does not respond at all. When using the usb 2.0 to connect the drive, it tries to install as an "Blank Oxford USB Device".

In my program files folder, i have a new dir, "Oxford Semiconductor\Firmware Upgrade", so i guess the My Book uses it to upgrade the firmware.

I would be eternally grateful if any of you gurus would help me get the drive back online! Been traveling Europe for a month, got home yesterday, and all the pictures are on that drive. + thousands of other photos, which may or may not be backed up!!

try "seagate easy recovery pro" it may be able to recover your drive.

but first try to re-flash the firmware upgrade.

Reflashing does not work because the computer does not detect the drive because the flash i empty :P

Cant use recovery, for the very same reason.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=242
this your thing?

as far as i can see its just a hard drive in an external case

so if you have the mettle to pull this off, you remove the hard disk from the case and connect it to the system and get back to your data.

it should be very easy, you only need to remove 2 or 4 screws, and then the cover would pop off, and everything would be visible.

i would advise copying the data to another drive, and then running 'spinrite' and then do a low level format with 'Active Kill Disk', and then setting up the partitions as you would want

now that your data is safe and accessible, what about the case?
i think you have to take it to a WD Service Centre and get it reflashed by them.

Ark!

Thanks for your answers

Yup, thats mine.. I have already opened it an taken out the hdd. It did not have any screws thou, so it took some time to figure out. Might post a guide here later..

Now i just have to find a computer with sata, and an empty 500gb drive to copy all my stuff to.

After that i will probably RMA the disk to WD..

I have the same problem can you please tell me what did you do to fix this problem. and if you open the HD can you tell the HD was opened, becouse maybe if i can save the data files i can return this and get a new one.


let me know how did you fix this please.


i thank you in advance.

Hi, I am a member of the club, too. And as i searched the web, I am not the only one.

h**p://sadjadbp.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!21F12BB61B822DFA!221.entry#post

Here is the stupid support Western Digital info... this is really terrible. They make BUGGY firmware updates and put them on download pages... during the process your disk gets corrupted - to be precise, disk is OK, but the case has corrupted firmware thanks to the Firmware Upgrade 1.08a.

I really do not know, what to do, why they can not give you some tools to fix their mess? I do not want to give them HDD back (inside the case the disk all OK) and I have on it sensitive bussiness data.

As I get it, my only option is to take out the MyBook HDD and connect it as a classical HDD into the computer via SATA and throw that black MyBook Premium case into dust bin?? Because when I take it out (by myself) I lose the warranty. And when I give the disk back to reseller, I lose my business data.

That is one hell of a CRAP.

So anyway, who had put out the disk before me, can you please post some info how to do it?

Cheers, here is something about the firmware error
h**p://anotherdeadblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/western-digital-my-book-firmware.html

And here is walkthrough how to open the disk.

h**p://anotherdeadblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-to-open-western-digital-my-book.html

Instead of those two stars at h**p insert "tt" like http, cause it will not allow me to post a hyperlink here (as some sort of spam control, I guess).

Cheers. Hope it helps, it helped me... ))

I have encountered the same problem, but it can be fixed and I've provided a step by step guide at
h_ttp://do0g.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-recover-from-failed-mybook.html

(replace h_ttp:// with http://)