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My Western Digital 500GB NAS drive (which is my main backup device) has recently broken. Windows can no longer use it as a network drive (using Map Network Drive), and the web-based control panel is INCREDIBLY sluggish, taking as much as 5 minutes to load a single page.

However, when it does load, it reports the Drive Status as OK, and has the correct disk usage values, which leads me to think the actual drive is OK, and it's the networking components that have failed.

I have checked the wires and router, and so it their isn't another point in the network causing the problem.

Is there any way to get the data back? It's a backup, so I still have about 80% of the data spread out across 3 computers (the only major loss being my music library, and I have the discs for a fair proportion of that).

However, it'd be much more convenient if I can get the data from the drive itself, as it is organised properly on the drive.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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the Western Digital MyBook NAS drive has a reset button (the tiny hole between the power connector and the ethernet port). this will reset all settings to facory default. run the wizard to reconfigure the drive to your requirements.

if this doesn't help, as mentioned previously, remove the SATA drive from the enclosure and connect it to the sata port of your computer or any USB > SATA adapter/enclosure.

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  • Does the reset button harm the data on the drive? Also, I haven't changed any settings since updating to the latest firmware about 3 or 4 months ago.
    – Macha
    Sep 1, 2009 at 16:45
  • reset doesn't 'harm the data' on the drive. it will reset the built-in linux based operating system to the default factory settings. the system is NOT on the drive. when you reset the NAS just run the setup wizard again.
    – Molly7244
    Sep 1, 2009 at 16:57
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You could always extract the drive from the NAS and get a simple external drive enclosure so you can re-access your data.

I'm not sure how 2.5 Sata drives work, but you may be able to just plug it in to a free SATA port inside your PC (if not, they probably make cheap adapters to let you do so)

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  • Yep, the cables are very cheap if you order them online - expect a 200% markup or so if you want to pick them up local retail.
    – Kara Marfia
    Sep 1, 2009 at 16:59
  • "the web-based control panel is INCREDIBLY sluggish, taking as much as 5 minutes to load a single page." now that doesn't sound like a broken hard disk drive, so before ripping the NAS drive apart, fix the operating system.
    – Molly7244
    Sep 1, 2009 at 19:45

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