Disk Utility tells me my 1Tb WD My Book is actually 2Tb - Scared of Data Loss!

[ID_Field_Blank]

Ok, this is my first post here, although I have been a reader for the last year or so, and I really hope I am posting this is the right place.

At the beginning of November I bought a WD 1Tb My Book and have been happily using it ever since. It has 3 partitions on it, one for ccc, one to use with Winclone, and one to store movies and music etc.

I was accessing it last night and we had a power cut, this prompted the "Device Removal" message you get when a device is removed without ejecting. Since then I have not been able to use my "My Book", and all the data seems to have been wiped off it (This is no biggy as it is all backed up thank God!), however my macbook only recognised one partition when I remounted the drive in disk utility. I ran the verify and repair tools and no luck so I decided to erase, reformat and repartition it. This is where the fun starts!

Since then disk utility is absolutely adamant, no matter how many times I erase/repair/partition the My Book, that it is actually in fact a 2Tb My Book. (I know it isn't as I bought the essential edition and not the mirror edition). When I partitioned the My Book so that there is only one partition taking up the whole space of the drive it first told me that there was 1024gb available (this is more than a 1tb should have [931gb] when you take into account the number of bytes), so realising there was something up I reformatted it and it is now telling me there is exactly 2Tb of space available. However, when I split the drive into my 3 partitions I get 1Tb of useable space and disk utility tells me that there is 1Tb of free space on the drive.

The "Disk Description" in disk utility is "WD 10EAVS External Media" but when I google this I don't get any results other than a load of reviews for similar drives.



Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to "fix" this problem? Has anyone experienced it before? Is the hard drive corrupted? In which case do you think that I should return the drive? - it has a three year warranty.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ltldrummerboy]

Are you using GUID partition map? Have you checked that the drive firmware is up to date? It looks like the "Repair Disk" button is greyed out. Is it always like that?

 

[sickmacdoc]

Based on the fact that you have certainly done the right things in troubleshooting and are up against that persistent 2Tb false identity, I really think it is time to seek warranty repair.

At this point nothing but swapping the drive itself into another enclosure (not the easiest of tasks with MyBooks especially without screwing up the cases somewhat) would further the troubleshooting effort to identify if the problem is in the drive or the enclosure interface electronics- though I am betting on the enclosure itself.

In either case, it is not something you will probably find a homebrew solution to so as much of a pain as it is to ship it off and wait for the replacement, let Western Digital deal with it and take solace in the fact that you have done all that you can do IMO!

Edit: And yes, thank goodness you are one of us who maintain backups! Applause and a hearty pat on the back to you!

 

[ID_Field_Blank]

Thanks for the swift replies!

Yeah I am using the GUID partition table, yes the drive is up to date and no the button isn't always greyed out, that happened when I open the Grab utility to use take the pictures.

I think you are right sickmacdoc, i was hoping it was something simple that I needed to do but I did think that would be the answer. Its a bit of annoying really and one of those "another things to deal with". I guess I'll have to phone them up tonight!

Thanks for the help! And yes, thank god I back stuff up!

 

[slipper]

This isnt making me feel very good about my 500gb My Book.