How to recover data from bricked WD My Book World Edition White Light hard disk?

Problem

How to copy/save my data fromWD My Book World Edition White Light I or II (further as MBWE) hard drive(s) when:

• MBWE doesn’t boot up at all or
• MBWE shows failed DataVolume and is not accessible anymore?

Solution

• This guide is intended only for copying data from MBWE that can’t boot anymore. If it does boot but MBWE shows failed DataVolumethen go to… (guide in preparation).
• In case of MBWE II (2 disks array) guide works only for RAID 1 (Mirror) and JBOD modes. Other array modes like RAID 0 (Stripe) and Span (Linear) are not covered here.
• For RAID definition and its modes refer to the MBWE User Manual(Manage RAID, page 126).

WARNING !!!

This operation will degrade your MBWE II RAID structure, so you MUST NOT disassembly your healthy MBWE in any case. Once you have already done that and connected one of the hard disks to your PC, follow to this guideto repair your mistake (it’s for WD ShareSpace but works for MBWE too except RAID 5 mode).

Don’t do anything if your data is worth to pay „any money” – go then for the professional recovery services at support.wdc.com/recovery

Quick How-To

1. 1 Boot Ubuntufrom CD/CDRW/PenDrive/HDD. How-To on ubuntu.com in Download Ubuntu section. During boot choose Try Ubuntu.
   
   NOTICE:
   If you have problems with other linux distributions/versions simply use Ubuntu 10.10, because I tested it.
2. 2 Connect HDD
   you want to backup directly to the computer, using SATA-to-USBadapter (or any other hot plug way, e.g. FireWire, eSATA).
3. 3 Open Nautilus window
   simply clicking on Examples folder on Desktop (Nautilus is analogous linux app to Windows Explorer or Mac OSX Finder)
4. 4 Start Multi-disk Drive
   clicking in Nautilus on (1) Computer icon, then (2) find HDDicon called 2 and right click on it, and (3) from context dropdown menu choose Start Muti-disk Drive option.In popped up requester click Start Anyway button.
5. 5 Browse HDD
   called 2: X.Y TB Filesystem (where X.Y is your HDD capacity) and copy your files to another device. Folders represents your MBWE Shared Resources, so you should easily find yourself
6. 6 Stop Multi-disk Device 
   when you are done.
   

That’s all

Now you can fresh install MBWE firmware following How to fix bricked WD My Book World Edition White Light or install brand new disk? guide.

Source