• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
  • The forums have been upgraded with support for dark mode. By default it will follow the setting on your system/browser. You may override it by scrolling to the end of the page and clicking the gears icon.

WD Gold Internal HDD - 'LOCKED'

J

Johnny Utah

Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
31 (0.01/day)
Got a 12 TB WD GOLD and a 10 TB Seagate HDD.

One evening I noticed my WD Gold drive has disappeared, I have checked Device Manager, Drive Management, reconnected to other cables etc
NOTHIGN. The drive is just not showing up not even in the BIOS. I even reinstalled Windows 10 and then i installed Intel RST because i have an intel SSD for Windows

What do you know, the only place where my WD Gold shows up is in Intel RST software but it shows up as 'LOCKED' even though i never did that. The drive spins, seems OKish

Anyone got any clues how to unlock this WD drive? I still have warranty for it but i don't want to lose all the data i have on it by sending it to WD
 

Attachments

  • Annotation 2020-02-03 110658.jpg
    Annotation 2020-02-03 110658.jpg
    115.6 KB · Views: 393
Try a different SATA/Power connector that is known to be working, chances are it's drive failure unfortunately.
 
did this drive work in the machine prior? For how long? Is this from WD or a reseller? Was this drive taken out of a piece of equipment like a camera server or a NAS/San appliance?

does the label have extra branding on it other than WD gold?
 
Did you try it in another computer (if you have that option)?
 
Johnny Utah said:
The drive is just not showing up not even in the BIOS. I even reinstalled Windows 10 and then i installed Intel RST because i have an intel SSD for Windows
Click to expand...
After Windows installation, could you see it before you installed RST?
 
Id be careful buying internal HDDs from Amazon. Here in the UK theres a major problem with Amazon and merchants on amazon selling drives that were originally designated for other parts of the world so are 'out-of-region' and arent covered by the warranty. Amazon usually guarantees your purchase for 1 year. Sometimes they will try and pass the buck and push you back to the manufacturer and have them deal with you instead but all the manufacturer will do if your HDD is out of region is send you back to the retailer so basically youre stuck in the middle and the only way youre gonna get out of no mans land is to be fully keyed up on your consumer rights and throw the book at Amazon.

This used to be a WD thing. but aparently Amazon have done it to Toshiba too, to the point where Toshiba have mostly pulled their internal hard drives from sale on Amazon, though you will still find them but they will be bought via 3rd parties through amazon. Afaik this doesnt happen to seagates. Either Seagate doesnt region lock their drives or they are pretty cool with dealing with products that are bought legitimately through official channels

Ive seen many product reviews about this happening on Amazon UK so YMMV in different parts of the world. Just be careful and remember to check warranty online before ripping open the electrostatic bag and installing it.

External drives seem to be just fine afaik.
 
My first guess would be a drive on its way out.

My other, completely-left-of-field guess is that you tried to format the drive, which resulted in the issuing of the ATA SECURITY ERASE UNIT command. Secure erase is an abomination from PATA's times: in order to actually issue the command, you first have to lock the drive by setting a firmware password on it... then you can secure erase it... then you have to remove the password to unlock it so you can actually use it again. From personal experience, BIOS/UEFI support for locked drives is poor at best, in that many don't know anything about locked drives, and hence can't unlock them.

Far more likely, however, that the drive controller is on its way out. If you really need the data on that drive, you need to power it down and unplug it, because every power cycle is likely to push it closer to digital oblivion. From there you have two options:

1. Buy an identical model drive with identical firmware and get someone who's good with a soldering iron to swap the controller chip from the new drive onto your drive. If the controller is on the fritz and the drive firmware isn't locked, you're good to go.
2. Send it to a data-recovery company. Likelihood of success is higher than using the first option, but you will pay through your nose for it - we're talking thousands of dollars, and of course nothing is guaranteed.

Note that "send the drive to WD" isn't an option on this list, because the only thing they'll do is send you a replacement and toss your drive, including data, in the trash. Data recovery is not their business, selling hardware to put data on is, which is why you should always have backups.
 
Try asking WD support. Really sucks if it's dying after 1 year, it's supposed to be their top of the line HDD...
 
  • Like
Reactions: xvi
Johnny Utah said:
I believe it can be unlocked somehow.
Click to expand...

It's failed, most likely, so no.

Even if it is an ATA security lock, you aren't getting past it. You'd need the original passphrase.

Dead drive is dead
 
Not even BIOS recognizing drive is bad sign and likely hints to failing drive.
Which is really the only goal of all storage devices.
Some drives just arrive there faster than others.

I assume you checked if Windows's Disk Management or command line diskpart recognize it?
 
High likelihood this is a corrupted drive firmware as the capacity is not detecting well. Send to a data recovery if the data is valuable.
 
check that serial on WD's site and if under warranty then RMA it get it replaced
 
  • Like
Reactions: xvi
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top