Western Digital external harddrive

[tpman3]

I bought a 500 gig WD external hd and it died. I plug it in, it spins for about 5 seconds and dies. Just wondering if this is a common problem, the drive was only about 2 months old. Has anyone else had this happen?

 

[acewarlock]

I have had drives not work right out of the box.




This is a Signature and not part of the answer, it appears on every reply.

This is an Analogy so don't take it personally as some have.

Why change the engine if all you need is to change the spark plugs.

 

[vacunita]

I've had drives not work after turning them on just once. So although its not something that happens frequently, its also not completely impossible.

If its still under warranty, I'd have it replaced. Otherwise, I'd try to open it and check if the internal drive has died, or if is a problem with the enclosure.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[brettsinger]

I would return it if possible. If not try a different machine with a different OS - I had an external drive that died on a Windows 2000 machine but was still readable on Windows 98, which at least allowed me to get the data off of it.