Long story short, WD cloud was dropped, now red led stays on. (not mine). Can't access drive. I took out the hard drive (3TB WD Red) and plugged into my PC. The drive powers up, you can feel it spinning, but it is not detected by PC. Any experts here can shed some light on this matter? The hard disk is totally dead?
I suspect, although I cannot confirm, that Western Digital uses self-encrypting drives in their My Cloud NAS drives - Tech ARP - ED#196 : 8 Facts You Never Knew About Western Digital's Hardware Encryption If that's the case, then you cannot retrieve data directly from the drive. You MUST access the drive via the My Cloud NAS itself... BTW, when you said it's not detected by the PC, is that in Windows... or in the BIOS?
Okay, I just checked with Mike from WD. The My Cloud does not use self-encrypting Red drives. If you cannot detect it in the BIOS, it's "dead" as far as you are concerned. The owner will have to get the drive looked at by a data recovery specialist...
Not sure what I did, its partially detected. Hard Disk now appears in the BIOS, but 0GB capacity, no serial number etc. Just the model appears, but still not detected in Windows. out of luck.
Yeah, looks like it's dead. It's possible to recover the data but he will need to send it to a specialist.
You will have to try a data recovery tool if you can access it... or send it to a HDD recovery specialist, if it's not accessible.
...and the specialist take the HDD apart, take the magnetic discs and move them and pair them with HDD mechanic (head and head movement) and electronic that was not (yet) dropped by anyone and hence they work. That way is possible to restore data from most drives. The only question is - is the lost data worth that expensive procedure?
