WD Elements External HDD not responding...

The_Illuminator

I've just plugged in my WD Elements 1TB External Hard Drive , and it's not being recognised by my computer.

I'm running Vista Professonal, although I'm not sure how relevant that is, as I tried it on another computer, and XP one, today and gt the same result.

The 'My Computer' window freezes every time I plug it in. It does show up in the 'Device Manager' window and claims to be working, but I can't access anything on it, or even right-click on it. The Disk Management window seems to recognise it sporadically.

I could understand this if it had been dropped, or had got wet, but nothing like that happened to it. It was working perfectly yesterday, and I'm starting to panic now. There are a few files on there that I can't do without.

I'm competent with computers, but don't know enough to tackle a problem like this. The main suggestion I could find on other forums was to use 'chkdsk' , but that doesn't seem to have an effect either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

bonzodog2

When DiskManagement does recognise it, does it show the partitions, and say its healthy ?

When you say chkdsk doesn't have an effect, does it complete ? Sometimes it may have to schedule itself to run at the next reboot, due to needing to get exclusive access to the drive. Try this if it asks.

Keywal

Oh dear.

as the man said, let it run on next reboot.

if that fails then the likelihood is that it was either dropped which means the pins that read the platters are bent and thus the HDD is 'dead'. Or you could have a power failure of the little PCB board inside the drive.

can the case of it be opened? the drive could be taken out and attached to a desktop machine which would have the power to run it... it has worked in the past for me.

hearny

Is the drive actually powering up you should feel it spinning if you hold it in your hand while its plugged in. Had a power supply fail for a WD External Hard Drive recently.

Are there lights on the hard drive or adapter. If so are they lighting up.

What kind of sounds are you getting from it. (Clicking etc.)

ricman

if power unit,or pcb damaged,its possible to just open it up put the hardrive in a sata caddy.cost 20eueo.
TRY changing the 13amp plug , in the 3pin plug.is the power light coming on.
see here http://www.d-a-l.com/help/drivers/55321-usb-device-not-recognized.html

macinalli

Hi folks,

Having a similar problem with one of these. Was working fine but recently seems to have decided to give up the ghost. Have rebooted the computer with the HDD attached - still doesn't appear. Likewise when I go to disk management it's not there either. It had been making a clicking sound but seems to have stopped now. The lights go on when I plug it in but that's about it. Any tips?

The HDD has a lot of music on board that I don't have anywhere else - are there companies that can recover data from terminal-looking cases?

bonzodog2

There are companies that recover data, but they are expensive. If it is just music, you can probably get it again. Its always worth trying a different enclosure before paying big bucks though ! Checkout data recovery programs too - Recuva,Photorec (free),R-studio,GetDataBack (not), and others. If you didn't drop the drive or spill your beer in it, you'll prob be OK. There are many threads here about similar issues, with good advice, search and learn. Good luck !

ricman

Make a unix boot disk,eg mint unix on a cdr 700meg.BOOT INTO mint os,it should pickup the drive,unless power unit,pcb is damaged.
search mint unix iso .see www.linuxmint.com, its easy to open the case ,install the drive in a pc as a slave drive.
PUT tape on the hard drive pcb,underneath the drive to stop short circuits or static damage.
SET pc bios boot mode cd=0,1st boot drive =cd/dvdrom.