I cannot access my external hard drive. I have had it for several years and it just stopped working.

artistinspired · Aug 5, 2015

Hi,

I want you to know first I have scanned the hell out of your forums for an answer to this. I have had my external hard drive for about five years now. I have ten years of my life and my kids lives on this thing. (Including about five thousand songs).

It was working fine a few months ago (on the same computer I am on now, windows 8.1). I tried to plug it in today and five hours later I am still fighting with this fucking thing. (sorry, i'm annoyed)

Here is the deal before you tell me the same things you have been telling everyone else. It shows up in Device Manager and working, it shows up in Control Panel as connected and functional.

In Disk Management is where I cannot fix things. It is showing up as Disk 2. (yes I right clicked and no I do not get an option to change the letter and path) When I right click I get four options only.
Initialize disk
offline
properties
help

I cannot initialize the disk, it says access DENIED.

clicking offline does absolutely nothing

I have used cmd to try to change ANYTHING and nothing happens.

It has that black line and obviously is not being recognized, but I have no clue how to fix this.

Am I screwed??

No, there was no accident. I didn't drop it. it's been quietly sitting on my desk since I disconnected it around march.

I have uninstalled everything (including all usb) and reinstalled everything. I have restarted and reconnected fifteen different ways. I even went to their website (wd passport) and tried installing their specific driver and software (which need to be installed directly on the drive....*facepalm*.....hahahahahahha!!)

HELP PLEASE!!

Boogieman_WD · Aug 5, 2015

Hi artistinspired and welcome to the community.

I'm really sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with your drive. Just to clear things up a bit, if you're referring to the "SES driver", it has nothing to do with the HDD being detected by the OS.
Now for the issue at hand - what exactly does it say on the "black line" in disc management? Does it say that the partition is RAW or unallocated? It was a good thing that you were denied to initialize the disk, because things would have become worse after that with less chance to recover your data. Speaking of which, I'd suggest that you try the HDD with a different computer and a different USB cable (preferably not longer than 12"), to see if the same thing happens again. If that doesn't work - try accessing it via Linux Live DVD/USB, to see if it's properly recognized and if you can get to your data, or try some of the data recovery options from this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html. Unfortunately if neither Linux nor data recovery software works for you, then I'm afraid all you're left with is a professional solution, such as a data recovery company: WD Data Recovery Partners

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

artistinspired · Aug 5, 2015

Boogieman_WD :

Thank you Boogieman_wd for responding. I do appreciate it very much. I'm sure you guys get a lot of lost people here asking questions. I have actually worked with computers for years, so I get entirely ticked off at myself when I cannot solve a problem myself. But, sometimes we need to swallow the tech pride and ask.

I was going to add a picture but it doesn't seem to give me that option. so...

first of all, I just went back into the Disk Management to be sure I gave you the correct info and it is now Disk 1 (so it's changing on me, nice)

so it has the little disk pic, with a red pointing down arrow. next to the text Disk 1
Unknown
2047.35 GB
Not Initialized

I got very conflicting info when searching about the initialization. Some saying that it has to be initialized to show up, some saying it would erase everything. At this point just getting it to DO anything would have been a step forward. But yes, I'm glad it didn't erase everything. However if I can't get it fixed I may just lose it all anyhow.

I have used two separate cables. the one I am using now is the one that came with the drive. they are both very short cords. I just went and tried it in my old (for the kids) xp dell and it said it was installed and ready to use, and guess what. didn't show up in my computer. so I still cannot access it. the light on the hard drive is coming on and it is spinning, I can feel that quite well.

I have not had a chance to look at the recovery link you gave me, but I will try. i'm disabled and ...well that means not financially well off and I know how much it costs to recover stuff like this. what I don't understand is why?

Not to sound paranoid but I think I got hacked. I have my reasons for that on top of this, but .......it doesn't fix anything.

Boogieman_WD · Aug 5, 2015

No worries, mate. I know exactly what you mean when you say "tech pride", but it happens to me as well. There have been a few IT administrators here, asking questions as well, so don't feel bad that you had to ask for help.
(just FYI, if you want to add pictures, you can do that by uploading it somewhere (e.g. imgur.com), then click on Post an answer, which is in the bottom right corner of the last comment in the thread and there click on the "picture icon" or press ctrl+p, enter the URL and it should appear)
About the initialization - both sides are actually right. In order to be able to use a drive it should be initialized but after that it should be partitioned and formatted. This is something you always have to do with a new internal HDD in order to show up in Windows Explorer. But in cases like yours, where there's no reason for the drive to be in this state, you should avoid initializing it. It sounds like the drive is having issues, but I'd stay away from diagnostics tools for now if I were you. There's a slight chance that Ubuntu Live DVD/USB might be able to recognize the drive properly and hopefully it will, or at least one of the data recovery software options could manage that, although this is a bit of a long shot, because the drive might not be recognized by them if it's not initialized. Here's another link which includes a lot more data recovery programs: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm
As for data recovery companies, I can't really comment a lot on the pricing, because it's different for each case. But they do have to have different class "clean rooms" free of dust particles and the process can be quite complicated sometimes. Perhaps those are some of the reasons.

I really hope you're able to get your data back. Fingers crossed!
Good luck!

artistinspired · Aug 5, 2015

Boogieman_WD :

Man, I think I'm screwed. None of the programs for for file recovery are finding the drive. I read up on some more trouble shooting and it is telling me that if in Disk Managment it says unknown, that the boot sector has been corrupted. (most likely from a virus, which means my being hacked theory is probably right)

Are there any "easy" solutions for something like that?

or perhaps a different file recovery program that would get to it??

This sucks..

Boogieman_WD · Aug 6, 2015

Well you could try fixing the MBR or scanning for viruses and malware if you think that this might be the case. But before you go there, I'd mention one more time that you should try Ubuntu Live DVD/USB, to see if it recognizes the drive. Here's how to make an Ubuntu Live USB (this basically is a portable, freeware, bootable version of Linux): http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows
If that doesn't help, you could try the "chkdsk" command. I've been avoiding it, because scanning the drive with it could potentially be data destructive, but if you have no other choice, here's how to do it:
1. Open CMD as an adinistrator
2. Type chkdsk X: /r /f (where "X" is the letter of the drive you wish to scan)
3. Wait for the process to finish and reconnect the drive to see if it helped

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I cannot access my external hard drive. I have had it for several years and it just stopped working.

artistinspired

Reputable

Boogieman_WD

Judicious

artistinspired

Reputable

Boogieman_WD

Judicious

artistinspired

Reputable

Boogieman_WD

Judicious

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