External hard drive failure

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Divinefavour

Commendable
Jan 1, 2017
1
0
1,510
Please, my 2tb WD passport fell from my bunk and stopped working. I use a windows 7 and when i plug it in, the computer makes that sound that shows that something was plugged in. But i cannot access the hard drive. I can find it in devices and printers under control panel and in device manager. It does not work on any other computer so I don't think it is a missing driver on my laptop. Please, the data on this hard drive is extremely important. If it is not fixable, can you please tell me a way that i can get all the information on it back? Thank you very much
 
Solution
Multipack
Try opening up the disk and seeing if the USB interface and/or SATA connectors have come loose. You could even try using it as an internal disk if it has regular SATA connectors to bypass any issues it may have with teh USB-SATA bridge. Obviously it could be the hard disk itself, but worth a try.

Read this https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6121
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Tanyac

Tanyac

Reputable
Aug 30, 2014
745
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5,415
Sounds like a mechanical failure, since windows detects the drive the controller may be working, but with a mechanical failure (like head crash, which WD tend to suffer from more than Seagate), this is the sort of symptom you will see.

If you haven't been backing up the data the news is not good. Data recovery is a niche market and specialists charge ridiculously high costs for recovering your data. Many change by how much data they retrieve. And they often won't turn it around quickly for you unless you pay them more.

I doubt this will work, but you could try booting of a disk like Hiren's Boot CD (or something similar). These have a collection of tools for working with hard drives. From time to time I've managed to get some data off a failing drive... But that's the keyword "Failing" they weren't completely dead. A couple of hours worth of work to try it.

Google hard disk data recovery.

I've been through this scenario myself. I bought all sorts of tools off the internet, and none of them worked. My failure was a seagate, which tend to suffer controller failures. In the end I lost 15 years of family photos. Lesson learned.

Good luck
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
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35,960
Hi there Divinefavour,

That is really unpleasant. :(

Unfortunately, mechanical drives are really vulnerable to physical shocks/hits. It seems that the drive has sustained some physical damage.
If the data stored on it is really important, then my suggestion would be to look for some professional help. You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: https://support.wdc.com/warranty/datarecovery.aspx

If you want to go with that, just unplug the drive and don't try to access it.

@Multipack Even if the OP manages to attach the drive internally, assuming there are no proprietary connectors, the data would be inaccessible as the device is hardware encrypted. This means that the data can't really be accessed unless the HDD is inside the enclosure.

Let me know in case you have some more questions,
D_Know_WD :)

 
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Multipack

Multipack

Honorable
Sep 5, 2016
4,283
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9,960


Oh, ok. Is this a WD thing? Because out of interest I tried with an old Seagate drive (model number 9SD2A2-500) and it worked straight away.

 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
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35,960
Well, some of WD's externals feature hardware encryption, others don't. WD My Passport and WD My Book do.

Generally speaking, yeah. If the device is not hardware encrypted and has no proprietary connectors, the drive inside should be properly recognized.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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