Imagine That! Studios

Determination Through Failure II: More on the MyBook

In my previous post “Determination Through Failure” I got a reply from Paul Fischer of Dancing Cat Studios concerning Western Digital’s MyBook. In this comment he suggested:

If you’re still in need of the data on the bad MyBook, I suggest trying out Disk Warrior. I had a disk crash a few months ago, and it saved my bacon. The disk in question was the drive with all my backups. Disk Warrior let me get the data off to a new drive before [the old drive] failed completely.

My reply started to grow hair, so I thought a follow-up blog post was in order.

First, thanks, Paul. His Mac Fu is strong, and I do appreciate his advice on this matter. In fact, many of my followers on Twitter have tweeted possible solutions and even a member of FiT offered to give the disk a checkup with his diagnostic software. I will give Disk Warrior a try, but I’m not certain the real problem is the drive itself. As I had mentioned, I ran disk diagnostics and according to the utility everything checked out. The problems occur when I attempt to copy from the MyBook to the new internal.

To give a bit of history here: When I initially bought this MyBook back in March 2007, I bought it specifically for the FireWire option. (When it comes to the USB 2.0 vs. FireWire debate, I prefer FireWire.) I was so impressed with the MyBook (initially) that I went out and purchased a second one. The moment I tried to daisy chain the drives, both dismounted like Olympic gymnasts. I contacted WD’s Tech Support and told them the problem.

Their first response: “Well, you got USB 2.0. Use that.”

No kidding. That’s a direct quote.

After explaining that the drives mount fine separately but will not daisy chain, they then said “Oh it’s a problem with the cable.” I asked if buying a new cable will remedy this. “No,” they replied, “it has to be one of OUR cables. There’s firmware in our cables specific for MyBooks.”

You know, I write Science Fiction and Fantasy…and nothing I’ve concocted ever sounded as far-fetched as this.

Left with no other choice I agreed to the replacement cable. When it arrived, I swapped out the faulty cable with the new one, mounted the drive, and then plugged into it a second MyBook. Both volumes spun up…and then dismounted.

Back on the phone with Western Digital. This time, they said, “Hmm, this sounds like we will have to escolate the ticket. So, here’s your number and we will contact you in 48 hours.” That was 14 months ago.

Yes, I did try following up with them…twice…and they left me on hold. It has only been in recent months the MyBook using FireWire was not mounting at start-up’s and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for that.

Paul states later in his blog comment:

Google did a study of failed hard disks a few years ago. As you can imagine, they burn through more hard disks than you’ll ever own in your life. They studied usage time, operating temperatures, and a few other factors. None of those factors mattered. The only indicator of drive failure was the batch the drive was produced in. To put it more simply, that drive was probably from an inferior batch which gave it a greater probability of failure. That doesn’t mean all MyBooks are going to be bad.

I would argue, though, it’s a slim chance a MyBook (of a different storage capacity) purchased at Best Buy comes from the same batch as a MyBook purchased months earlier from an Apple Store in a different county of Virginia. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely. Also what makes me wary about MyBooks on a whole is its lackluster performance alongside a seven year old LaCie drive. As mentioned in the previous post, the LaCie workhorse has never given me a problem and a lot of data has passed through it.

From this MyBook experience, I have discovered other cost effective options for storage and (in the future) backup options that I need to research further. The experience has also reminded of this incredible community known as Twitter (something I will be discussing in later postings); and I remain affirmed that out of all the different social networks out there, Twitter is the superior tool for its streamlined delivery of communication and content, and its ease of use.

So no, I’ve not given up on the data trapped in the dodgy MyBook. With friends like Paul Fischer, Brad Boyer, and the good people of Friends in Tech, there are always options, always solutions.