My Book 3 TB Dropped

Ive got a 3 TB My Book which my boy dropped. At first it didnt work and had a soft vibrating sound. Then it worked. Now it picks up in my computer but says it needs to be formated. Any ideas? I have testdisk 7.0 but have no idea how te even operate the program. I bought a new usb cable in the hope that it could be the cable, but it is not.

Physical damage to hard drive can present a lot of different symptoms. The bad news is that there is a good chance that even after a format that the drive may not be usable. The good news is that its possible that only a small portion of the disk was damaged and it could remain usable for at least awhile. In order to determine which is the case the first thing I’d do is run a scan using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics (both a quick and extended test - download link below) - if it gives ANY kind of error than the drive is too far gone and you should replace it.

If it passes both tests than you need to make a decision - is it more important to have a working drive or to access the data on the drive. If the data has not been backed up (or is not a backup itself) than you will need to contact a Data Recovery company (link below) for assistance recovering it. If the data is not important, go ahead and attempt the format. This erases the drive and attempts to give it a new file structure. If the drive is usable it should appear once the format is complete.

Since the drive is physically damaged, you won’t be able to RMA the drive (they’d detect the damage and return it to you) but if you do need a replacement we sell 3 TB My Books as low as $100 now. See the link below:

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