Western Digital My Book Live 2TB Data Recovery

problem:  Blue light turned to red after 40 seconds.  reset button did not work.  solid green light bottom (1GB) and flashing green light top.  Computer would not recognize drive.  Although the drive was under warranty, data recovery is not covered and is very expensive ($50 just for diagnosis).

decision: try and recover data myself as cheaper to do that and buy a new unit than pay a data recovery service then have drive replaced under warranty.

step 1:

remove the cover.  lots of youtube videos searching for "remove wd hard drive".  this was most helpful. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Western+Digital+My+Book+Live+Teardown/26942
as you only have to work the 4 tabs and takes about 30 seconds.  one side then the other.

rest of the disassembly is straight forward.

step 2:

access your data on the drive.  I have a PC running windows 7 64 bit and used R - Linux.    I had an extra sata port on my motherboard so hooked it up internal to my PC.


http://www.r-tt.com/free_linux_recovery/Download.shtml

my daya was in the EXT4 partition.  see nfodiz post

http://community.wd.com/t5/My-Book-Live/R-Linux-help/td-p/541235

step 3:

recover files to another hard drive