External Harddrive Inaccessible for Formatting

I have a 4 month old 1.5 TB WD external harddrive connected to my Windows 7 Dell laptop. About three weeks ago, the harddrive quit working. Any attempts to access it caused my computer to freeze. I tried opening it directly, accessing through command prompt, and plugging the drive in to another computer. No luck. I tried deleting files via command prompt. No luck. I opened disk manager. Tried to reinstall the driver. Still nothing.

I've finally concluded that my best bet is probably to format the drive and start over. My only problem is that I can't find a way to access the drive long enough to wipe it. Right clicking for the menu that would normally offer formatting causes the computer to lock up. Opening the device manager simply yields as "connecting to virtual disk system" message and a grayed out window.

As I purchased it through an online retailer, not the manufacturer, I'm not certain that I'll be able to replace it under warranty, but I'd rather not do anything that voids the warranty just in case. All help you may be able to offer would be greatly appreciated. Recovering data would be great, but at this point I'd be delighted to just have a way to start over.

Thanks!

 

Hi David,

Thank you for your help.

My external drive is assigned the letter D. Obviously keeping the data would be preferable, but none of it is irreplaceable, so I am comfortable wiping it.

I've had a couple of results (non-resolving) today.

• 1 • When I opened the Disk Manager first and plugged in the drive second, the manager still froze, but when I unplugged the drive again, the DM asked if I wanted to format D. So I plugged D in again and clicked yes. It froze again. So the command went out, but it did not format. I left it plugged in for about fifteen minutes. Ordinarily, if I plug in and then open DM, I get no data. Just a grey screen and the "connecting to virtual disk service" message with no resolution.
• 2 • I opened CMD as Admin. As long as the drive is plugged in, the disk part freezes and will not function. Once I remove the external drive, disk part works just fine.
• 3 • On my third or fourth Disk Part attempt, I plugged the disk in after I opened Disk Part, but before List Disk, and once My Computer said D was connected, I chose List Disk, but it only listed my main harddrive (C = 0). I typed in select disk 1 (figuring 1 is after 0), but it said there was no Disk 1.

Does that give you any more thoughts? I'd be glad to screencap anything you think might help you get a better idea of the situation.

Thanks!

 

Finally got through to someone. Replacing it under warranty. Thanks so much for your help.