External WD 1TB Hard-drive unresponsive.

yodason45 · Oct 21, 2014

Hi,

I'm having troubles getting my External Western Digital 1TB Hard-drive to read on my home PC.
It takes forever to read, and when it finally does, auto-play shows nothing loading.
Auto-play eventually closes, and nothing. My Computer displays the hard-drive as H: without the name I had personally kept for it.
Upon double clicking it, My Computer freezes up indefinitely.

It displays in Disk Management, and appears to be working.

I am using Windows XP.

I even checked it on this old laptop I have, it took a little time to read, but it did read.(Windows 7.)

I have important files and documents on this hard-drive.
Please give me a solution.

delaro · Oct 21, 2014

"Edited right answer to the wrong thread"

The problem I have with External hard drives is sometimes not Disconnecting them before I unplug. This can sometimes Fubar the USB driver and cause headaches with all the other devices I use.

Western Digital has a nice set of tools that will fix common issues like this and do diagnostics on the drive should you have driver deaths. Windows sometimes installs Generic works for everything drivers that don't always work with some of the newer firmware. It also may ignore the suggested driver that may be on the drive itself.
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=203&sid=3&lang=en

D_Know_WD · Oct 21, 2014

Hi there yodason45,

So basically, the drive is working fine on your old computers but not on your current one? If that is the case, most probably the problem is caused by some drivers.

You can try this: Device Manager -> find the USB device -> Uninstall -> turn off the hard drive. After that you can turn it on and let it find and install the drivers automatically.

If this does not help, you may also try to re-install your USB controllers:
-Click Start; in the start search type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
-Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
-Right-click every device under the Universal Serial Bus controllers node, and then click Uninstall to remove them one at a time.
-Restart the computer, and then Windows will reinstall the USB controllers.

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

yodason45 · Oct 21, 2014

@delaro: I think that is exactly what happened. I unplugged my External before ejecting it because it was not responding and left my computer frozen. Everything got back to normal once I did. After that the external hard-drive stopped responding completely. I also tried the Diagnostic Tool, it passed, but it's still the same.

@D_Know_WD: I tried your method, and it did not work. Now I get an I/O error.

The new error states, "H:\ is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

Please help me?!

D_Know_WD · Oct 21, 2014

I/O(input/output) error is sometimes related to connection. You can try changing the USB cable if you haven't tried that yet. So the drive is not working on both your computers? What the is exact model of the drive?

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

yodason45 · Oct 21, 2014

Will any company's USB cable do? Or will I have to purchase a specific type?

And at first, it worked on my old laptop, but I didn't browse through any of the folders. When I checked later, it wouldn't open, and when it did, I couldn't browse the folders. It would hang up.

I have a Western Digital Elements 1TB External Hard-Drive.
Or do you want the model number written on the box?

I'm just really scared of losing my data. My hard-drive isn't corrupted or anything is it? Because it is relatively new, say about 2 years now.

D_Know_WD · Oct 21, 2014

Any USB 3/2 cable will do the job. The model that you have is not hardware encrypted, which means that it can be attached internally through SATA. This will void the warranty(if still any) and you can try that if nothing else works. Though, if the cable does not solve the issue, the issue may be enclosure related.
In Disk Management, the drive seems to be right? You can download the WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and run the test and see what it will tell you.

WD's DLG tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&lang=en

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

yodason45 · Oct 22, 2014

Enclosed related? What does that mean?
And yup, in Disk Management the drive shows up, name and all, unlike in My Computer where it shows up as H:.
I also downloaded WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tool and ran the program, it said it 'passed'. I tried to scan for errors with that, but it kept getting stuck at a certain sector(or whatever it's called).
I even ran 'chkdsk H: /f', there too it would get stuck at 2 percent.

I'm gonna see if I can borrow my friends USB cable and try that.
I think my drive is still under warranty. So, if that works(my friends USB cable), should I back my stuff up and try for a replacement? Or should I just invest in a new cable?

D_Know_WD · Oct 22, 2014

Keep in mind that chkdsk command may take a really long time in order to fix the issues.
Regarding the cable, you can just borrow one.
When I said enclosure related, I meant that the problem you are facing may be related to the plastic casing of the hard drive. Though, as it is still in warranty, you should not take the drive out.

As the drive is recognized in Disk Management, you can try running some data recovery software. Keep in mind to save the recovered data not on the drive(in order no to overwrite) but to another location.

You can check this link out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

If this does not work, you can run the chkdsk H: /r again and eventually wait for the process to finish.

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

delaro · Oct 22, 2014

Coming back to this Thread I had a Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive Model# SRD0SD0 That contains a Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB drive with the same issue that yodason45 is currently describing dropped in my drop box. The only way I could get it to work was to replace the PCB which I happens to have. With the old PCB the computer would recognize the drive but access to the data was impossible. This is a issue with unplugging the USB cable before everything has shut down it is rare but it happens. If replacing the cable and running Chkdsk doesn't work then your issue might be the same as this one.

fzabkar · Oct 23, 2014

Data recovery professionals will tell you that running CHKDSK against a drive with numerous bad sectors is inadvisable due to the potential for serious data loss. Instead it would be better to clone the drive, sector by sector, using a tool such as ddrescue which understands how to deal with bad media.

Furthermore, WD drives are often afflicted with a "slow issue", in which case there is a DIY workaround,

http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29187&start=20
http://www.alexsoft.org/viewtopic.php?t=998&p=4345#p4345

I would use a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo to assess the physical state of the drive. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

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