3 Dead WD external HDD's in one day! (Solved)

[twicksisted]

So I thought I'd post this here as I haven't come across anything like this before. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket

I have 3 "Western Digital 8TB My Book" external hardrives that I use to back up the videos I make for my YouTube channel.

I have bought them over the last 3 years. The oldest is around 3 years ago and the youngest is around 1 year old.

They sit unplugged ontop of my computer case and only a couple of times a year I plug them in and take some old footage off them.

I dont leave them plugged in or powered on to prolong their life...

I needed some old clips for a catch up video I was making, plug in the first drive and its completely dead, so I plug in the next, also dead, and then the 3rd one, also dead.

No noise, no vibration, completely dead drives.

Last time I used all 3 of them was afew months ago and they were working fine.

I try different power adapters and usb ports, cables, try plugging them into my other pc's and laptop, and finally take the internal sata drives out of the enclosures and plug them directly into my pcs power and sata.

Still nothing... All 3 have died a exactly the same time... so weird!

If anyone's interested, the internal hardisks are: WD80EDBZ

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EDIT - im an idiot
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Thanks for all of the suggestions guys... turns out im an idiot and the drives are working fine

It's all the USB ports on the front of my case that weren't working! So when i changed ports it still diddnt work.

Also I used a SATA to USB cable to test the drives and forgot that USB only supplies 5volts which is why they obviously weren't spinning 12v drives!

Then I tested those drives on my laptop using the 5v SATA to HDD cable and obviously that diddnt work either

I was going to bin the drives after writing the original post and decided to give it another go, but this time i plugged into the USB ports on the ack of the PC and they fired up instantly!

Silly me, even sillier as i had to smash up the external plastic enclosures to get the drives out... oh well im going to buy a 5 bay HDD enclosure with a fan to house them all in now.

 

[Harlow]

I have 3 "Western Digital 8TB My Book" external hardrives

Dang! I've got three very similar/identical drives 8TB portable USB3 desktop drives. Bought them all at the same time (probably not a good idea if they're all from the same batch). Not checked them recently, but have loads of other backups. I cannot think of a good reason why all three should have failed simultaneously.

They sit unplugged ontop of my computer case and only a couple of times a year I plug them in

By unplugged, do you mean the SATA and the 12V DC power cables are disconnected, or do you just unplug the SATA lead, or alternatively, just the 12V power cable, leaving the other cable permanently connected to each drive? Just clutching at straws here trying to think of a cause.

Unless the drives topple off the top of the computer on to a hard surface, or you bash the side of the case with a hammer regularly, they shouldn't have suffered from shock damage.

I wonder if the heads have parked and got stuck to the discs? If the heads are well and truly glued to the platters, it might explain why the motors don't spin up.

 

[twicksisted]

Yes I keep the 12v power and the usb unplugged and they just sit ontop of my computer case until I need to power them up.
Perhaps someone knocked them over, diddnt tell me and put them back up... still for all 3 to e completely dead is weird.

 

[qxp]

If they were just mechanically damaged they would make noises trying to startup. I would first very carefully double check all connections and try different USB ports - they appear to behave as if they don't see the computer or have no power. The external drives should have a label telling what power supply they need - double check that the label on your power supply matches. With each devices wanting its own power brick it is easy to get them confused and use 9V power supply instead of 12V one.

 

[Bomby569]

that's really weird they dying like that, didn't someone dropped them without you noticing it or something? Keeping them on top of the case is not the best place.

i haven't dealt with those type of enclosure drives in a long time but if i remember correctly you couldn't just plug them in to a PC like a normal drive, that won't work for WD drives, there were some workarounds. So maybe their good and it's just enclosure issues, and you just need to google what to do.

There are ways to restore the data even from a dead drive if it's important

 

[A Computer Guy]

Oh no I got the same thing preparing to rotate out my older drives. I noticed they don't have an activity indicator light which sucks because I can't tell if they are powered on or not also because they are very quiet. One thing I did discover about these drives too if you password protect them it seems you need to use the WD Encryption tool manually to unlock them vs. the older 2.5in passport devices which had a prompt popup to unlock them and auto mount if you saved the password. If you password protected them and don't unlock them Disk Management will see them as unused disks ready to be formatted and will not assign them drive letters.

 

[anonuser57]

Do the disks show up in disk management? Sometimes Windows will stop assigning drive letters automatically in which case you must go into drive management and assign one manually.

 

[Princess Garnet]

If they were just mechanically damaged they would make noises trying to startup. I would first very carefully double check all connections and try different USB ports - they appear to behave as if they don't see the computer or have no power. The external drives should have a label telling what power supply they need - double check that the label on your power supply matches. With each devices wanting its own power brick it is easy to get them confused and use 9V power supply instead of 12V one.

I mostly agree with this.

That seems odd that three drives would just be full on dead like that the same day when all are of varying age and worked fine the last time you used them. If it was just a single drive that randomly died, that happens. Two drives? That's getting odd already, but three? And for them to fail in a "no life" like no power is given way? I think something else may be amiss, like either the drives aren't actually dead and aren't receiving proper power, or if they are dead, something instantly killed them when you plugged them in (bad cable or USB port?).

 

[twicksisted]

Thanks for all of the suggestions guys... turns out im an idiot and the drives are working fine

It's all the USB ports on the front of my case that weren't working! So when i changed ports it still diddnt work.

Also I used a SATA to USB cable to test the drives and forgot that USB only supplies 5volts which is why they obviously weren't spinning 12v drives!

Then I tested those drives on my laptop using the 5v SATA to HDD usb cable and obviously that diddnt work either

I was going to bin the drives after writing the original post and decided to give it another go, but this time i plugged into the USB ports on the back of the PC and they fired up instantly!

Silly me, even sillier as i had to smash up the external plastic enclosures to get the drives out... oh well im going to buy a 5 bay HDD enclosure with a fan to house them all in now.

(its been a while since i used old mechanical drives... im so used to using SSD's on usb adapters that I forgot they used 12 volts!)

 

[TechBuyingHavoc]

Silly me, even sillier as i had to smash up the external plastic enclosures to get the drives out... oh well im going to buy a 5 bay HDD enclosure with a fan to house them all in now.

You could also consider setting up a NAS so that your computer auto-connects to these drives and it appears as an internal drive.. You can still leave the drives off by just disconnecting the power when it is not needed. Definitely a more complex choice vs a simple HDD enclosure.

Good to hear that it was a simple front USB port issue. I was starting to reconsider my offline drive backup method.

 

[twicksisted]

I think I'm going to order one of these USB 3.1 10gbps external 5 bay enclosures: https://www.amazon.es/-/en/gp/product/B0D12KWXC5
Looks nice and simple, relatively cheap, has a built in fan, and i just need to flick the power switch when i want to access any or all of the drives.
I'll keep it off most of the time when i dont need anything from my video footage archive.

 

[DaemonForce]

Yeah that just doesn't happen. If you're not going to check USB power, connect directly to sata/M.2 and test.

 

[95Viper]

He solved it... read opening post.