External HDD causes video error when plugged in, can't recover data.

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tungstenKestrel

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Jan 23, 2015
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Recently, my computer went kaput. All I kept getting was a black screen with a moving mouse pointer. At first, I thought it was my video card finally giving out on me. Eventually, however, I found out that if I unplugged my external HDD (WD 1T), my computer would right itself again.

In other words, nothing wrong with the computer, but all my pictures since high school, music, and dozens of games from Steam (my poor save files!) are trapped in the HDD. Manually trying to access the drive only freezes the documents windows, and I've tried Recuva, and it can't access it either.

Any ideas on how to recover the data at all?
 
Solution
D_Know_WD
Sometimes, a faulty USB cable could result in weird noises coming from an external HDD.
If the cable doesn't help though, there might be some physical issue with the drive and I doubt that software will help.
It may be a good idea to wait for some more responses as well.

D_Know_WD
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
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Hi there tungestenKestrel,

Sorry you are facing issues with your WD external drive.
Have you tried something simple as just changing the USB cable as well as the USB port? If not, it may be a good idea to do so.
If the issue persist though, and the drive could not be accessed by recovery tools like Recuva, I would say that your best chance of recovering your data is to contact a data recovery company.
Apart from that, I would suggest you to try some other recovery tools and see whether any of them will work out.
If nothing helps, then I guess you could try to run the chkdsk /r C: (c being the letter of the drive) command in the Command Prompt. Keep in mind that if the issue is caused by bad sectors, the command will try to repair them, thus may results in data loss of these particular sectors.

One more important thing: If your drive is WD Mybook, please do not take it out of the enclosure as it is hardware encrypted model and the data could be accessed if the drive is only in the enclosure.

WD's Recovery Partners: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=SOu7UU

Hope any of this help,
D_Know_WD
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Sometimes, a faulty USB cable could result in weird noises coming from an external HDD.
If the cable doesn't help though, there might be some physical issue with the drive and I doubt that software will help.
It may be a good idea to wait for some more responses as well.

D_Know_WD
 
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