4TB My Book - Clicking & Not Showing Up

Hello All,

I believe my 4TB My Book (WDBFJK0040HBK) is officially dead but I wanted to reach out to you all in hopes that maybe there is some life left.

What happened:
I use the drive to store games on my Xbox One. It was working great last night until went to try to download a new game. The Xbox said “Wreckfest stopped installing” or something of the sort. I noticed the HD only had 150 GB on it so I went to uninstall games and that would not work. This has happened before. I unplugged the USB and that was the last time I’ve seen My Book on my Xbox.

Right now it just makes a sound every few moments almost like a machine-gear-made-click/beep like its trying to access something but can’t. The light is on and the fans sound like they’re going it just, well, doesn’t work.

What I’ve tried:
I’ve read the forum and have tried most of the recommended things except a new data cable as I don’t have a spare.

  • Tried directly plugging it into the wall.
  • Tried different USB slots.
  • Tried restarting both devices. Unplugging them.
  • Tried plugging it into my PC.
  • Tried to slap it since I saw that recommended.

After plugging it into my PC it was still making the noise but here is a few things I found:

  • It would not show up as a drive with a corresponding letter
  • It would show up in Device Manager
  • All drivers were said to be updated and according to Windows 10 “WD My Book” was working correctly
  • It showed up in Disk Management as if all 3.8TB were free but Disk Management couldn’t access the device. Also no name was given other than “Disk 1” until I went to properties and it should the correct name.
  • I installed DiskGenius and was given this error: “Read Sector Error! Disk: HD1:WDMyBook1230(3726GB) From Sector: 0. 2 Sector(s) Total. (Err:0)”

Anyways, I’m really hoping for some positive news from the community but I realize it may not come but even a reassurance this is a lost external harddrive would make me at ease.

Thank you and any ideas on any good replacements; assuming it is dead?

Once a hard drive is formatted on the Xbox One you can’t use it on a PC unless you Initialize the disk / delete all partitioning and re-format the drive for use on a Windows or Mac PC.

As for the clicking sound … could be a number of things, all of them not good.

Advice: Never ‘slap’ a hard drive … you’ll be doing more damage than good. (whoever recommends the practice should be slapped themselves)

Hi Joey,

Thank you for the reply. I had actually tried to initialize the disk on my laptop and was not able to do so with Disk Management or other 3rd party tools. In Disk Management it showed the disk as “Unknown” Amount of Space (3800gb?) and then the 3rd line “Not Initialized” with the ability to initialize un-clickable.

Haha! Thank you for the advice. It sounded ridiculous but after trying everything else I figured why not.

I did decide to buy some new USB 3.0 cords which should be here tomorrow. So, hopefully those fix the issue although I am not so optimistic. If it does not work I’m unsure on if I should get the My Book or My Essentials as it will only be used as a game storage… My only worry is that both from my understanding are not 7200 rpm and I believe the My Book I bought in 2013 or 2014 was (which is now selling for $180 on amazon vs. $90 for the new one)

I bought a WD 4TB Elements USB Portable (Elements range is the cheapest) for my PlayStation 4 Pro to install games on … after a more than year , Zero issues :slight_smile:

Didn’t want a Desktop AC Powered drive that was ‘on’ 24/7 so i got the USB Powered Elements … which is only ‘on’ when my PS4 is (which i always completely power off when finished)