Data transfer on this external 2TB My Book always sucked, but it has now become so slow as to be all but unusable. None of the diagnostic tools will run (Smartware or Data Lifeguard). The data is there, it is visible, and if you have ten minutes to access an 85kb text file, everything is fine. Tried unplugging, new USB cable, different USB ports. What do these symptoms indicate, besides ANOTHER Western Digital drive about to fail? No surprise there. I stopped buying them years ago for this very reason. This was to be a backup only drive. Another bad assumption on my part…using a WD drive for anything. Yeah, yeah…I know nothing lasts forever. I know drives fail. This drive runs once a week for a few hours and IS MY BACKUP. If the answer is “refer to a data recovery company”, don’t bother. I’m looking for actual help or ideas. WD is the one who made the unreliable product, and I have not used or abused it beyond limitations.
Sorry to hear that you cannot access your files, what you describe sounds like a data corruption or hardware problem. Another troubleshooting steps that you can try is connecting the My Book to another PC, also try connecting the power cable directly to a wall power socket.
