Real World Workflow

Well folks, this does not end well. It’s a very sad story about a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition that found its way to Indonesia via a pelican case. It lasted 8 days and then on its return, flying in coach above its owners head suddenly ceased to work. I realized this after I had processed the job on the 1 TB drive. This was the only media that had enough space to hold all of the processed files, however I had raw backups elsewhere. When the drive died I had to reprocess the entire job – all 5 days of it, all over again. It took a good day but even after it had finished, I realized one important thing that I forgot. Luckily this thing was not job related. It was my own stuff that I was shooting while I was there. I had one select separated from the rest and that select was now stuck on that drive as it was the only image of mine that I hadn’t backed up. It was a very important image to me and if it hadn’t been for that image, I would not have gone through this whole saga that I am about to lay out for you.

First lets start with the symptoms of the hard drive and what they mean. When I got back from Indonesia, the first thing on my mind was getting the job out on FedEx that day. I arrived in the morning so all I had to do was move the processed images over to the new hard drive, call FedEx and viola, I could now hibernate until I left again for Asia in 3 days. Life is cruel, so very, very cruel. When I connected the drive to the computer it did not connect. I checked Disk Utility and it did not even show the device let alone the volume. From there I check the System Profiler – nada. So according to my computer, nothing was connected. Next I tried my other laptop…also no luck. I tried all the usual troubleshooting techniques – restarting the computer, the drive, reseting the drive, powering the drive down for a few minutes then starting it back up, changing the sequence in which I connect the power and firewire cables, I tried the usb cable and the FW 800 to 400 cable…everything. And when I called WD tech support after that they had me do the same thing over again. I obliged just to humor them, but knew none of this would work.

This is the point where they offered me a replacement drive and of course their top data recovery recommendations all of which cost over $2000 with one quote being over $4000. But looking back at the issue I realized that this was most likely NOT a hard drive failure. So I hung up with tech support and removed the drive from the housing. I connected that drive directly to my Wiebetech SATADock. Still nothing. Then I mount it into the Intel 8-core Tower. Still nothing. I am getting angry here, plus I need to restart processing the job. I do that, get some sleep and decide that I will hold off on doing anything further until I return from Malaysia.

Fast forward to 3 weeks later and I am still insistent that this issue is not platter related. A lot of what I read suggested that the issue had more to do with hard drive’s PCB (that little green board on the back side of the hard drive) then the hard drive itself. The reasons for this: No power to the drive and I wasn’t hearing any clicking or grinding sounds on the drive. To me this smells of PCB issues not platters. I want to remove the board to check but I also don’t want to void my warranty. Western Digital Tech support had been no help to my cause so I start emailing their PR department explaining to them that their tech support seems to be trying to sell data recovery more than they are trying to actually help fix the problems. I told them that even LACIE would fix hard drives if you send them in. All WD wants to do is ship you a new one. I thought it was a long shot but they immediately got me in touch with a lead in the tech department. He agreed to waive the void on my warranty if I opened it up. So I headed to the store and bought another WD My Book Studio Edition.

When I got back home I immediately swapped the PCB’s noting that the one on the failed drive had faint char marks where it connects to the drive. It was surely fried. The new PCB did not work though and as I learned, the firmware versions have to be identical for it to be compatible with the drive. I find this to be absolutely ridiculous but this is how it works. The front of the hard drive has some information on it, which is useful: Model Number, Date and DCM Number. The most important number is the DCM, which gives you an indication of the firmware number.

I was in need of a DCM with the number HBRCHT2ABB, with a model number of WD10EACS-00ZJB0 the date on the drive is November 2007. I quickly emailed my contact at WD and asked him if they could locate this. He passed it over to the warehouse guys and they quickly shipped me a replacement. However they shipped me the wrong drive. The DCM was off by a few numbers. I tried it anyway but no luck. I emailed my contact back at which point he very kindly said he could go no further.

At this point I decided to contact all of the Western Digital Wholesalers on their site. A week later one responded. A very eager woman by the name of Amy Yao at MA Labs out in New Jersey offered to help. I gave her the specs and a few days later she responded that she had located the drive I needed. I setup an account with them, got approved and they shipped me the drive. Again it was the wrong drive. The numbers were off by a few digits and the warehouse guys thought that would be fine but it wasn’t. That drive also didn’t work.

However what I noticed about all of these drives was that the hard drive platters would actually spin up. They did not do this prior to using the new PCB’s which was a sign that something was working on the drive side now also when I connected them to the computer they registered as devices on the computer but offered no other information, not even drive capacity which I think points to a firmware issue. So it is still very hopeful that the drive is still functional and that my data is still on it, however I will never be able to access it unless I find a drive with the correct DCM or find another way around this issue.

So at this point I have kept the replacement drive that Western Digital sent, the one that I bought from MA Labs as well as the failed drive in hopes that I will eventually happen upon the right DCM some day. But I returned the My Book and have completely sworn off buying WD drives all together, not because I think they are bad drives. They are actually fairly good drives, but Western Digital should offer repairs for PCB’s when it is apparent that the problem lies there and not with a complete failure on the platters. What good is a drive that has no real support when they fail?

It is a little fishy that there is so much misinformation involved in hard drive errors. Most would think that if the hard drive fails that there is no solution for fixing it and that you have to pay thousands of dollars to have the data recovered. I understand the need when the circumstances are right but it is very apparent to me that data recovery labs are profiting off of the misconceptions of hard drive failures claiming that only they are qualified to fix these issues when someone with the right tools (hard drive manufacturer technicians) and the right replacement parts (hard drive manufacturers!!!) can fix these issues at no cost, especially when these drives all come with warranties.

My issue has been seen by countless others and its not an issue specific to WD hard drives and enclosures. LaCie has consistent issues with hard drive failure, most likely due to the lack of cooling that their drives provide. I have three LaCie’s that I bought years ago that died prematurely. However my Wiebetech, Firelite and G-drives have all been extremely reliable.

This is an important lesson on backing up. Because these policies are not in place we have to be more diligent about redundancy. If it were the job, I’d have no choice but to spend the $4000 on fixing the drive. How painful it is knowing that you’re getting ripped off. As a person in charge of the files, they are your responsibility and because its your reputation on the line, it is a lot cheaper for you to fix the issue rather than having to explain why a job that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce is gone. I can live with the loss of one of my own images but my clients would kill me if I lost one of theirs.