When detecting WD HHD W7 asks "Do you want to scan and fix My Book"?

VeroKL · 06 Aug 2014

Hello everyone;
As always, I suck at finding relevant information that is already posted in the forum, so I am asking for help to direct me to the proper posts that I'm sure are here somewhere but I somehow managed to miss them. I really tried...

Problem:
I have a 2 TB Western Digital (WD) HDD My book (WDBFJK0020HBK-NESN) connected to my laptop for backups. Every time my laptop wakes up (Dell 6510, W7 HP) and detects the WD HDD, I get a pop-up window that asks me " "Do you want to scan and fix My Book?". Windows believes that there are some corrupted files in the WD external HDD. I have other external drives but none of them have this issue. The problem is unaffected by the other drives being present or not. I tried and that doesn't matter.

The WD drive behaves normally: It can be found in the task manager and in the Windows explorer just fine. I have used it for backups with Macrium and W7 native utility w/o errors. The files I retrieved from it for testing purposes are fine. I can navigate, everything looks ok.

BUT I get that pop-up every time! I think this happened since day one or very shortly after I started using the My Book.

The driver for the disk is up to date. My fear is that one day I will click "Yes, scan and fix" by mistake and I will erase everything I have in the HDD. I never installed the Western Digital "SmartWare" or -God forbid- the Acronis lite SW shipped w/the drive. I just plugged it in, watch W7 find the driver and used it basically as a giant USB stick...
Because I don't use the WD software, their site is useless to help w/this; but I read strong recommendations here against mucking up the communication with the external disks w/those unnecessary layers of SW control.

Q1- How can I tell if my drive really has problems w/o installing the WD software?
Q2- Could it be that W7 is spooked by the Macrium image files which are in Macrium's propitiatory format which may make Windows 7 think they are unreadable?
Q3- Would installing WD's SmartWare software (which has diagnostics in it) mess up the backup image files in the drive?
Q4- Am I doing the right thing by saying to Windows "Continue without scanning" when it asks me to let it repair My Book? It doesn't seem broken so I don't understand what's going on...

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

ignatzatsonic · 06 Aug 2014

Do you have any specific reason to think that saying yes would lead to erasure or any type of disaster?

Are you averse to running Western Digital's diagnostic tools on the disk? Or any other tool that might look for file fragments, bad sectors, etc?

That message is what I might expect to see if I had removed a thumb drive from a USB port before it had finished writing. I wouldn't expect that to be disastrous other than possibly to the file the drive was writing at the moment.

VeroKL · 07 Aug 2014

Thank you so much for your reply, Ignatzatsonic;

I'm not averse to running diagnostics; just sheepish, because I don't really know what I'm doing. Also I've read so many posts from people who do know, which tend to suggest that installing the manufacturer's SW that comes with the drives is usually a big source of headaches, especially if you want to use the drive for backups.

My fear is because a very long time ago I got a (similar?) error with a USB stick and Windows (I think it was XP) reformatted the stick. That is how it "fixed" it for me. With WD software, after many hours navigating their site, I still can't figure out if I can install their diagnostics tool without installing also their own backup software, which has very poor reviews b/c of bugs, etc...

VeroKL · 07 Aug 2014

I'm attaching here screenshots of:
- The top level folder in the WD Mybook
- The "WD apps for Windows" sub-folder
My goal is to install the WD diagnostic tools w/o also loading all the bloatware. I'm guessing that executing the "WDDriveUtilitiesSetup.exe" would do that, but I'm not sure...any thoughts?

ignatzatsonic · 07 Aug 2014

I agree with you to an extent. I would be reluctant to use most of the software that came with an external drive. I'd prefer to use Windows own tools when possible and to pick and choose carefully when Windows tools are inadequate.

I'd do one of the following things:

1: Go to Western Digital web site, download their tool for external drives. For internal drives, it's called Data Lifeguard. Data Lifeguard has 2 tests: quick and extended. The quick test would take no more than a minute or two. The extended test could take several hours. The extended test checks for bad sectors and may try to auto-repair any if found. I'm not sure if you have to accept the offer to auto-repair. You may be able to say "no, don't repair, bypass and continue testing".

I've used Data Lifeguard on a WD internal drive within the last 2 months. As downloaded, it has nothing to whatsoever to do with backup software. But I don't know if the tool I downloaded is the same tool that would be offered to you as an owner of an external drive. I ran the extended test on a brand new drive. It found no errors or bad sectors, so I can't tell you what it would have done (automatically without asking me) if errors had been found.

2: Use a tool from another manufacturer such as Seagate, who's tools are said to work with other brands and may allow you to just perform a read test unless you manually tell it to attempt repairs.

3: Run CHKDSK manually. I don't use external drives and am not even sure CHKDSK can be used on externals?

I don't want to insist you do anything. My guess is that pop-up is just telling you about a minor issue such as file fragments, rather than a significant error such as numerous bad sectors or a failing drive.

That popup appears to be from Windows, not from any WD software. My guess is that if you said yes, it would run CHKDSK---which is usually harmless enough.

Wait for some more comments.

R2D2WD · 07 Aug 2014

Hi, VeroKL

That type of Windows message may appear, if the device was not properly disconnected. Windows assumes that you may have some errors on the drive and that's why is proposing to scan. That message is unlikely to be related with any file format or software. It is not likely to lose any data if you click “Scan”, but there is a chance to see the message again. Generally you can disable this kind of messages but it is not recommended, because that way you may lose other Windows features, related with AutoRun.
You can check the drive for errors from Windows 7 Explorer or with the chkdsk [drive]: /r command from the command prompt (see links below). This is a standard check for the connected drives, but I highly recommend you to use the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics (DLG) tool, which is provided by Western Digital. Run it and scan the drive for some errors.
Have you experienced any issues with WD SmartWare? All WD products are meant to be used with their software. That is why I advise you to use the WD SmartWare for backups, which will handle the transition of the files between the internal drives and the external. It is highly used with all WD external products. You can update the software directly from WD web site and get support. All your previous backups will remain in the My Book.
Of course, if you prefer to use another software, go for it. You can download the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic, without the SmartWare, from the link, provided below.
If your device is working fine, you can keep clicking “Continue without scanning” every time you see the message.

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html -how to run Disk Check in Windows 7.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2641432 – official MS knowledge base.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3&lang=en – DLG download.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/940/ - how to use DLG to check drive.

Hope I helped.

VeroKL · 07 Aug 2014

Thank you, guys!

I went ahead and installed the WD Lifeguard diagnostic tool. It apears that upon intallation it checks automatically the WD drives it finds? It found my internal drive + 2 TB MyBook that is giving me trouble. The fast check came out OK. The extended test will need 21 hrs to run (the disk has > 1 TB of data in it). I'll report on the results of the extended test when it finishes (In 20 hrs, 40 mins).

I also tried, before downloading WD Lifeguard diagnostics: from the explorer W7 window:
Right-clicked on the drive letter; chose "properties"/ Error checking:
- With the option of fixing disabled: It scans ~ 1400 files and it stops and tells me that there are errors that need fixing.
The slider bar below the drawing of a little HDD seems to indicate that about 1/3 of the drive was scanned, but that may be a generic graphic indicator, not sure.

VeroKL · 07 Aug 2014

Ignatzatsonic;
For future reference: do you have a cheat-sheet for interpreting results from CHKDSK? I've run it on my internal disk before and I couldn't make heads or tales of the results... thanks!

(WD DLG Extended Test: 15.5 hrs to go)

ignatzatsonic · 07 Aug 2014

VeroKL said:

Ignatzatsonic;
For future reference: do you have a cheat-sheet for interpreting results from CHKDSK? I've run it on my internal disk before and I couldn't make heads or tales of the results... thanks!

(WD DLG Extended Test: 15.5 hrs to go)

I do not.

I'd put more faith in the WD tool anyway. Let it finish. It presumably is finding some bad sectors and will attempt to isolate them so they cannot be used in the future and exchange them for some spare good sectors that drives ship with. Perhaps that will get rid of the popup. If it doesn't, I have no further suggestions.

VeroKL · 08 Aug 2014

UPDATE:
the WD Data Lifeguard completed and it shows a green check mark next to the My Book. That's it.

Doesn't say any details. There is no place that I can see to find out if bad sectors were found, or if anything was changed, nothing. No logs...Am I missing something?
For now, I see if the system acts wonky again. If I does, I guess I will reformat it and smart from scratch...

Thank you for your advice!