External HDD cannot be detected

[NeoElemental]

I have a WD external HDD that was recently working, but now seems to be FUBAR. Please help me!

Some details:

I am using Windows 7 64-bit. The hard drive used to work perfectly. The drive does NOT emit any clicking noises. The status light for the HDD lights up and I can hear the drive spinning.

When I plug in the drive, it shows up in My Computer, but as Windows tries to index it or catalog it or something, I get the green taskbar of death, which just slowly times out as it fills up. Double clicking on the drive will cause it to hang.

I can see the drive in the Device Manager as a WDD External HDD, but trying to use Disk Management will cause it to hang. As soon as I turn off the drive, Disk Management will stop hanging and the internal drive will pop up right away.

Chkdsk also hangs when run on the drive. It just goes to the next line and doesn't output anything. I ran it for a night and nothing happened.

I've tried a few file recovery programs, and they all hang on trying to recognize the drive. I haven't tried taking the drive out of the enclosure and plugging it in directly because it's IDE and my computer only has SATA inputs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Tom's hardware hasn't let me down before!

 

[NeoElemental]

Bump?

 

[FreeDataRecovery]

It's sometimes the case that accessing a failing drive will cause it to hang. I suspect you would see the same behavior if you attached it via IDE. But that's what I would try next. Or try it with another USB enclosure.

Otherwise you if you want the data back you will need a data recovery operation.