† Mute point Posted March 20, 2013 Report Share Posted March 20, 2013 Having an odd problem with this. The drive is a Western Digital (green) from a Mybook casing, the USB port on it broke after so many times moving it around, and so I decided I would try to still use it. I shut down the computer, put it in, hooked the wires to where they go, booted up the computer. The Bios can see the hard drive, and Device manager can see the hard drive, but windows explorer doesn't show it. Is there something else I need to do to make it work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uipe Posted March 20, 2013 Report Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) You may need to assign a driver letter to it. Assuming the file system is not damaged / so different filesystem for mybook. Try going to Control Panel -> administrative tools -> storage -> disk management. Edited March 20, 2013 by uipe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† Mute point Posted March 20, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2013 According to disk management, I have to initialize the hard drive before I can use it. I'm not ready to accept that yet. So I'm trying a couple of free data recovery options first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† L4ugh Posted March 21, 2013 Report Share Posted March 21, 2013 I decided to look into this since I have a MyBook. I did a quick search and found this thread. Do you know if your drive uses SmartWare? There may be a small board in the unit itself that's designed to work with the SmartWare software in a way your pc can not. This could be why windows can see it but not read it. I'm still not entirely sure if it's an actual hardware or software issue. I know my drive loads a bunch of software bs when plugged in because I never wiped it completely before using it. Hopefully just giving the drive a good format will eliminate this problem, but I'd have to experiment to find out. This doesn't really solve your problem since I'm sure you have files on the drive you want. Do you know anyone that has a functioning unit you could temporarily use? You may be able to swap drives and get your files that way. If no one else comes up with an easier solution. I'll back up my files and play around with mine. Is there something really important that you need off the drive right away? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† Mute point Posted March 21, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2013 (edited) Not right away, but there are things on it that I don't want to lose. If there wasn't, I could format it and people say that will make it work. I don't know of anyone nearby that has one, and even if I did... Apparently WD uses hardware encryption that is decoded using the original USB adapter. Supposedly, a matching adapter card is supposed to be able to bypass that, but I can't find one... So pretty much, my options are to either A: Forget the data, or B: Attempt to repair the USB port in such a way as to let me get the data off, and then format it... and if I find hte stupid little port, I think I'll try that. Edited March 21, 2013 by Mute point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
† Mute point Posted March 22, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2013 Found the port, tried to solder it back on, it didn't work So I've formatted the drive, and am moving on. Lesson learned? Avoid hardware encrypted bullshit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rajurashmi2000 Posted April 12, 2013 Report Share Posted April 12, 2013 thats a big problem with smartware drives. if they fail the data is gone. you can't even recover it in another casing of the same model either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urban123456789 Posted June 2, 2013 Report Share Posted June 2, 2013 I had the same problem and I just use varanty and got new one . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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