My WD 2TB External HDD is not recognized under disk managment

[paul-1986]

My external HDD (A WD 2TB My Book) just up and quit on me while I was using it today. My computer was no longer recognizing it, and I could no longer access my files. My computer still acknowledges it under drivers however, and it claims all the drivers are up to date and that the device is working properly. I tried going into to Disk Management to see if I could do anything from there, but it isn't even recognized there. There is however a Disk 1 but it is unknown and not initialized. I'm assuming this is my external HDD since its the only external disk I've used on my computer. When I tried to initialize it, it failed due to an I/O device error although the error prompt didn't refer to any specific problem.

I'm really stumped on what to do next. I'm not particularly concerned with the HDD itself as opposed to the files on it.

 

[cball1311]

If it's USB, try it in different USB ports. You could also try a different cable if you have one or can get one.

 

[hedwar2011]

Do you have a different computer you can try plugging it into?

Are other USB devices behaving the same way on these ports?

You can also go in and remove the USB Root Hubs from Device Manager and let the system rebuild the driver files for the ports by doing this and see if it helps.

Not sure how to do that? Go HERE