[aprilsartre]

OS: Windows Professional XP 32-bit
Mobo: Asus A8V Deluxe
CPU: Athlon 64 3200
IDE: Maxtor 6L200PO & Maxtor 6L300RO
SATA: Deskstar HDS722516VLSA80 & WDC WD16 00JS-00NCB1
JABOD array (I don't know how to set up RAID)
Memory: 2GB

And here's where my troubles begin:

Last summer I bought a WD My Book Essential 500GB external drive to store my music. I should've bought two drives, I know that now.

This drive was working fine until last Friday, when I booted up and after a few minutes, got a Data Write Error message. I'd never seen that before for any drive. I rebooted, and the same thing happened. I went to the My Computer folder and the drive was not listed there. I then went into Device Manager, where formerly, it was listed in Disks as WD500C032. This time it was "WD external storage device". In Disk Management, it wasn't listed at all, where before it was Drive I.

I unplugged it and removed the USB cable, rebooted and plugged everything back in. There were three clicks and silence, then another three clicks and silence. The message I got was "Found New Hardware USB Mass Storage Device," then "WD External Hard Drive," then "Device is ready for use." No, it wasn't, because the configuration in My Computer, Device Manager and Disk Management were the same as before. I thought then that this drive was on its last legs, so I started GetDataBack to see what could be salvaged. Strangely, GetDataBack listed it as a WD 2TB external hard drive. That would be nice if it were true (and working) but as far as I know, it's a 500GB drive with about 400GB of data stored on it. I plugged the unit into my Vista HP laptop, but it wasn't recognized there either, so I disconnected it entirely.

Given the situation, will I be able to pop the enclosure open, hook up the drive directly to the mobo and salvage anything?
Is there a cheap and/or free disk image mirroring program I need to use?
And what's a better external drive than WD? I'd rather keep my exposure to these situations to a minimum.

Thanks.

Thanks.

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This won't help you with your problem, but I've been using WD Mybook External drives for years - and they've never let me down.

But I only use them for backup, NOT as a primary storage location.

[Jonesey]

This won't help you with your problem, but I've been using WD Mybook External drives for years - and they've never let me down.

But I only use them for backup, NOT as a primary storage location.

[aprilsartre]

I extracted the drive from the enclosure and plugged onto the mobo as a secondary slave. I got the same "click 3 times-silence" routine ad nauseum upon reboot, so I removed it. I have no idea what's caused this in the first place. It's never been dropped, it was cleaned every couple of days with an aircan... I'm stumped.

Never mind the WD warranty, which at this point is void. Is there any way I can retrieve the data? It seems to me that there's some partition these disks must have to be read that's separate from where the data is stored. Can that be bypassed somehow?