How to retrieve files from a WD My Book World Edition II with two 2TB drives.

TSQMAN-1

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A little background:
I bought this WD NAS over ten years ago and it has ran fine up until about six weeks ago
when it died. Windows 7 just no longer sees the mapped out drives in My Computer. There
were no sounds coming from the spinning drives just nothing. So I decided it was a WD
enclosure problem and not a hard drive problem. So I pulled the hard drives from their
enclosure and connected one of them to a “USB to SATA Adapter”, then plugged it into my
computer. The computer made a sound of a USB device being plugged in, but nothing
showed up in My Computer window. My conclusion is that I would have to look elsewhere
for my answer if I wanted my data back.

So I started my research on the internet, and found there are a lot of people with the
same problem and no support or fix from WD to correct it. I found that some people had
success with Linux. I have an older DELL laptop laying around so I loaded Linux Mint 20
“Ulyana” – Cinnamon (64-bit) on to this older DELL. I can at least see the drive now in
the My Computer window but can’t get into it. When I try, I get the error message “Unable
to mount location”.

In the past six weeks I have read and tried countless internet posts, most of them have
been Terminal Window stuff without any success. I know there is a solution out there, I
just need someone’s help to find it.

If you are willing to take on this challenge, you will find that I’m highly motivated to
retrieve my data. I promise to check this forum every day and try your suggested key
strokes and post results.

Shown below are two looks at both drives “Disks” & "sudo fdisk -l". I’m hoping that if
someone is willing to help me this will be useful to you.

Thank You in Advance
TSQMAN-1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information from Linux Mint Disks Command -----Disk Number 1

Model: WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0 (01.00A01)
Size: 2.0 TB (2,000,398,934,016 bytes)
Partitioning: Master Boot Record
Serial Number: WD-WCAVY2497662
Assessment: Disk is OK, one bad sector

Information on Partition 4 (It's the Largest and I Believe the Data is Here)

Size: 2.0 TB (1,997,081,543,168 bytes)
Device: /dev/sdb4
UUID: 8f7e3052-dbae-d664-7273-ee3ce6483360
Partition Type: Linux RAID auto
ConTents: Linux RAID Member (version 0.90.0)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information from Terminal Window Command "sudo fdisk -l" -----Disk Number 1

Disk /dev/sdc: 1.84 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors
Disk model: EADS-00R6B0
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0001cf00

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 64320 3984191 3919872 1.9G fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdc2 3984192 4498175 513984 251M fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdc3 4498176 6474175 1976000 964.9M fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdc4 6474176 3907024064 3900549889 1.8T fd Linux raid autodetect

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information from Linux Mint Disks Command -----Disk Number 2
Data is exactly the same as disk number 1 except what’s shown below.

Serial Number: WD-WCAVY2497155

Information on Partition 4 (It's the Largest and I Believe the Data is Here)

UUID: 3066fbfa-03fd-8233-4217-cbc4f1db6bbb

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Information from Terminal Window Command "sudo fdisk -l" -----Disk Number 2
Data is exactly the same as disk number 1 except what’s shown below.

Disk /dev/sdb: 1.84 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 64320 3984191 3919872 1.9G fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb2 3984192 4498175 513984 251M fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb3 4498176 6474175 1976000 964.9M fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb4 6474176 3907024064 3900549889 1.8T fd Linux raid autodetect

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 


In the past six weeks I have read and tried countless internet posts, most of them have
been Terminal Window stuff without any success. I know there is a solution out there, I
just need someone’s help to find it.
Did you try testdisk/photorec? https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_ES both pkgs get installed when you install testdisk
There's this too https://www.r-studio.com/free-linux-recovery/ I've used both and they do a fine job recovering files from damaged disks/partitions
 
Hello Tolkem:

First of all thank you for your reply to my post.

The three suggestions you made for software I don’t think will work. Because I don’t believe there is anything physically wrong with my hard drive disks.

If you do a GOOGLE search on “How to retrieve files from a WD My Book World Edition II” you will find a lot of postings about this topic. Most of the suggestions there are Terminal Mode Linux solutions some were successful. Unfortunately the ones I’ve tried so far have been not.

Thank Again

TSQMAM-1
 
The three suggestions you made for software I don’t think will work. Because I don’t believe there is anything physically wrong with my hard drive disks.
You won't know that for sure unless you try, will you? :)
 

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