External Hard Drive Failure - recognized as CD Drive

Friends --

I have a WD2500 external hard drive I have been using to expand my PC's HD capacity that recently began to fail. The drive powers up and spins and soon after, I hear the little clicks of the arm hitting the side of the case. I was hoping to transfer data to a second drive but it did not arrive in time...
What I don't understand is this: After contacting WD Support and switching power to a wall socket, it seemed to fix things for a day. I removed the drive from the PC for awhile and after uninstalling the drivers, booted up as WD had told me, only the drive shows up now as a CD playing drive, which of course, asks for a CD to be inserted before it will access it....
After disconnecting the WD Ext Hard Drive, it still shows up under My Computer and Disk Manager as the CD Drive. If I remove the drivers AND the Drive, when I boot, windows reloads the drivers as if new hardware was found without it being connected! I do not know how to uninstall this ghost of a drive. Please advise!!!
If the Drive is spinning, I believe the electronics are bad and am willing to purchase an identical drive (if I can find one) and swap the electronics, then see if I can access the data. Otherwise, recommendations for affordable data recovery or any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Please - Can any one help?

 

HD damage fun. i dont know how many times i thought everything was f'd but it was something simple, do you have a image ghost saved ??? or unplug everything but you HD with OS on it and give that a go, cheers ps; im not guru by any means its just that your post has been up for a bit with no repley. iam waiting for a reply to a post too. have to wait for the right person to pop in,

 

Yank -
Thanks for chiming in - hope you got your reply!

While it was a bad PCB that caused the external HHD to fail, I still have the problem of hardware NOT present or attached to the PC. The old failing drive still shows up under My Computer as the CD Drive, but is not present in Disk Manager. If I remove the drivers, when I cold boot, windows reloads the drivers as if it were there and I get: new hardware was found. Now, that is without anything connected! If I click on the drive not there, I'm asked to "Insert Disc" in a CD drive I don't have (which was actually the bad external HHD). I do not know how to uninstall this! Can anyone help???

Running XP Home/SP3

 

Are you sure it isn't loading the WD backup software?

I have two WD external hard drives and I NEVER installed the software for backups that it wanted me too. I get an error but I X that out because I want to use my own backup software and not the WD program.

You have to look at your startups (msconfig) and see what WD is loading. You need to remove the backup software and then run something like CCleaner to clear the registry keys that might be showing in msconfig.

 

Plodr --

Thanks for the quick reply!!!

No, never loaded any software with the drive. Checked to make sure with msconfig, nothing from Western Digital on startup. IIRC, the drive was simply plug-n-play once you insert the USB.

I do remember, as the drive failed, I tried connecting the drive through alternate USB to see if I could read the drive. It was at this point the hardware did show up under "My Computer" with the exception it was now seen as a CD Drive (and wanted a disc inserted). It never appeared in Disc Manager and still doesn't. Now it is stuck in My Computer using up a Drive letter I have a number of shortcuts to. I can't reassign the drive letter because even as a CD Drive, it is not in disc manager - nor is the old drive letter designation available as a choice anymore. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

 

Change drive letter (this is for flash drive but will work with external hdd too).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbGGPVbnRCM
and see if that gets it to stop being seen as a CD drive.

Try this if the above does not work
Click on Start --> In search box, type cmd and press Enter.
Now enter the below commands in the black box that appears

Code:

set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Press Enter

Code:

cd\

Press Enter (the cd here is DOS for change directory; it has nothing to do with cd drive)

Code:

cd windows\system32

Press Enter

Code:

start devmgmt.msc

Press Enter
Device Manager opens.
Now in device manager, click on "View" --> Select "Show hidden devices"
Expand all the nodes by clicking on "+" symbol. If you find any greyed
entries --> Right click on it --> Select "Uninstall".
Restart your PC --> Now try connecting your external drive.

 

plodr --

Thank You again! As in video, unable to change drive letter for the device as the drive does not appear in Disc Management. The letter (K) that it retains, is also unavailable as a choice for assigning Drive Letters for other devices.

Tried going through the cmd (Run Window) and found numerous "greyed-out" entries, most of which are old flash drives. There were 2 WD Devices listed, one greyed out, one actively seen. The greyed out device was listed as:
WD 2500BB External USB Device
This is the drive that eventually failed and is no longer connected to the PC
The second "live" device (not greyed-out) is listed as:
WDC WD3200AAJS-00L7A0
This is the device showing up as a CD Drive retaining the K Drive Letter. According to WD, this number is for an internal drive, hopefully not my my main HHD.
You have recommended removing the "greyed-out" entries, however, it is definately the second (WDC) drive listed that is the problem. I uninstall the drivers and it just comes back at each boot.

Should I uninstall the WDC WD3200AAJS-00L7A0 as well, even though it is not greyed-out?

 

Truthfully, I don't know. I have never faced the problem and could not begin to guess what to do about entries that are not grayed out.

 

I trust the PCPitstop site. There is a driver to download there.
http://www.pcpitstop.com/drivers/download/WDC~WD3200AAJS-00L7A0.html
You do have to register before the download becomes available.
I would try the 2nd link just based on the popularity, even though the two links look to be the same version.
Maybe this driver will work better than the one Windows installs for the hardware.

 

plodr --

I'd like to report that after uninstalling the old WD 2500 drive, it did not come back upon cold re-boot. This was the drive that caused the problem, as it failed. The invisible (non-present) CD Drive( K: ) still shows up in My Computer.

I can obtain the new driver as suggested but, I'm a little confused. Why install a driver for a device I do not have connected? Some where along the way as the WD 2500 HD failed, when it was plugged into a different USB port, it became recognized as this CD Drive. Since I don't believe I have a WDC WD3200 internal drive (umm, know how I would check that?) I can only conclude that the computer thinks that drive is installed, thinks its a CD Drive and keeps reloading the drivers when I boot, even though its not there. Any way to prevent the drivers from loading upon boot? Safe Mode or something?

I believe some glitch happened during the failure where the pc is now set to have that WDC CD drive as a permanent resident! I could backup the registry and look in there if you know where to look? Is there somewhere where the drive letters are not only assigned, but codes for hardware being present (even if its not)? I don't know either, just probing potential scenarios... What do you think?

I'm also going to check if there is a WD forum - maybe this is something specific to the My Book Essential drive???

Thanks Again!

 

plodr --

Checking what I could, I used the "Populate" option under Properties-Hardware-Properties-Volumes for the WDC WD3200 drive and it showed "C" & "D" drives so this is apparently my main HD, so I don't want to go uninstalling that! However, it might explain why the drivers reloaded upon boot each time I would uninstall them. There should be an easier way to check the specs of your HD, but I don't recall what it is...

So, that leaves me with the unanswered question, why is there a phantom CD drive showing up listed as K? The only thing I came across at Western Digital Forums was this: http://community.wdc.com/t5/External-Drives-for-PC/My-Book-Essentials-Clicks-Shows-as-CD-Drive/m-p/385133#M11049 Apparently a question that was never answered. Then again, the entire forum is folks complaining about technical problems and I have yet to see someone post a fix for any of them. I haven't seen a "WD Tech" respond either. What a waste.

So there you have it.

My My Book Essentials Drive "clicked" and now shows as a CD Drive... as well.
Maybe I should add: ...and although I've replaced the drive, it left me with a little STD: a phantom CD Drive on K.

Any thoughts?

 

Sorry, I'm out of ideas.
The only time people mention phantom drives is when they've installed something like Daemon Tools.

Somewhere I got confused and assumed you had a working external drive but it kept being labeled as a CD drive. I was hoping a new driver would get the drive recognized properly.
If you have no external drives, then yes, go ahead and remove anything your are sure is not internal.

Did you try and remove the non-existent drive using Add/Remove Hardware?

 

In Device Manager, look for:
WD Drive Management devices > WD SES Device > Driver > Driver details > C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\wdcsam64.sys (from http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=1807053&postcount=33)

You may need to unhide hidden devices again to see this, once you have found it, uninstall it from DevMan and reboot - don't be surprised by a crash.



Edit: your driver name may be for the 32-bit version, not wdcsam64.sys but the Windows (Device Manager) name should be the same.

 

Thanks for all your help and suggestions to both of you.

The issue is resolved.:-D
But it was something completely unexpected - well, at least to me.

Apparently, I had installed a program years ago called DiscinDisK which allows users to create virtual CD's. This was being used to mount a virtual CD to play a game called "BattleZone-II" which is no longer available, but which has a following and numerous mods to expand game play. Deleting DiscindisK caused the CD drive showing in My Computer/Hard Disk Drives to migrate to My Computer/Other immediately. It showed similar properties but now had a red question mark associated.:confused A simple restart and the offending drive was gone.
Hope this helps those who may have similar problems - uninstall your virtual CD creator!

Now, I didn't have a copy of DiscindisK to reinstall to see if the drive came back by just having the software installed. Searched on-line and it is no where to found except on Chinese sites loaded with malware and viruses - BEWARE!
There is alternate virtual CD software around as freeware, if you need it to run your game mod, so I'm experimenting with what I found available. If anyone comes across a clean copy of DiscindisK, please let me know and I'll retry that, having the conflict resolving information we have now.

Thanks one and all!

 

Ah, most virtual drive software can be problematic for a few users, none are perfect.

Glad you got to the root of it, now double-check that there's no trace of malware

 

Never heard of DiskinDisk, that's why I mentioned Daemon Tools, the one I see most often that creates virtual drives. I'll have to add that name to programs to search for that add phontom drive letters when optical drives act up.

 

plodr --

Yes, please do add it! It is spelled "DiscindisK" by Savage @Software.
My apologies, didn't know about all Daemon does....
If I did, I'm sure you would have hit the nail on the head!

-- Orbit
ps: glad you broke that ole "2100 Thanks" hump! ;-D