WD External Hard Drive Not Working

Hello, I have a Western Digital My Book 1Tb drive, which was my back up drive. Recently my cat knocked it off the table and now I cannot access the drive. At the time my cat knocked it down I was formatting my laptop and had backed up my laptop information to the external drive. Everything is backed up to this drive.

I have tried it in 3 different computers. Two on Vista and one with Windows 7Ultimate. On the Vista machines, the drive shows as a USB mass storage device, but it does not show in my computer.

I went to a computer shop and they suggested I buy a new Sata/IDE external drive caddy, which I did and changed the WD drive from the orginal case to the new caddy, but it made no difference except the computer salesman is probably having a bit of a chuckle at my expense.

When the drive starts up, it appears to have faint clicking sound and then stops.

I have checked through disk management and the drive shows as disk 1, no initialized but when I right click and initialize disk I get an error message showing "incorrect function"

This is my back up drive with everything on it. I have heard that data recovery can be quite expensive, but I need to get this drive going as it has backups of all my passwords, at present I cannot access anything.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Lee

 

Hi, and Welcome to MG!

Try Partition Wizard to see if it sees the drive as having any partitions on it. If it does show the partition in the graph then right-click it and select Explore to see if it can see your files.

 

Hello thank you for your reply, I tried Partition Wizard and the drive did not show at all.

Regards

Lee

 

I'm not sure what to tell you. Perhaps, you could try attaching the drive internally to one of the computers thus eliminating the USB connection to see if is recognized as a Hard Drive.

 

That was going to be my next course of action, just need some time to take apart my desktop computer.

 

The faint clicking sound is troublesome. I guess you tried partition Wizard in one of the Vista machines that at least saw the HD in Disk Management?

The only other two thoughts I have is try TestDisk to see if it sees the HD.
1)Download and unzip
2)Have USB plugged in
3)Go into win folder and run testdisk_win.exe
4)Create is highlighted so hit <enter> and see if the HD is seen. (If not seen then just "Q" to quit.
5)If seen then highlight it and <enter>
6)Intel is highlighted so hit <enter>
7)Analyze is highlighted so hit <enter>
8)Quick Search and see what it comes up with.

Get a small Linux distro like Puppy Linux and burn it to CD or put it on an EMPTY usb flash drive to boot the computer from. It would serve the purpose of letting you know if a non Windows machine might be able to read the drive and allow you access to the files for copying to another media. (If you want to consider this option we can give instructions for putting the downloaded ISO file on disc or USB.

 

I will follow your suggestions, although I have no idea of what Linux is, where to get it or what to do with it.

 

I am in another thread with a WD external (My Book model) which seems to indicate that there can be problems when the drive is not in its original case. Did the drive show at all in Disk Management when in the original case? Did it also show as not initialized? I want to make sure we are not working against ourselves by having it in the new case.

 

Orinally in the old case, I had no problems with it. But when it got dropped off the table, thats when it stopped showing in the old case, that was why it was suggested that I buy a new case.

 

I don't know what to tell you it doesn't sound like the drive is being seen by the computer yet you are seeing it in Disk Management. Does it show in Device Manager?

Just type device Manager in the Start/Search box. Look under Disk Drives. It should show with a model number--I just want to know if it is being seen there.

 

Did the drive fall off the desk while data was being transfered specifically? That may mean the platters have been scratched, or the write arms are jammed or something.

 

No, it was not even plugged in or running when my cat knocked it off the table. But when it starts up it makes all the usual sounds and then there is a faint clicking and it stops the start up. I am thinking that the fall off the table may have damaged the arms or something.

 

It does show up in Device manager and disk management, it shows in the USB task manager as a mass storage device and generic USB drive. In disk management it shows as disk 1 not initilized but when I try to right click it. I get an error incorrect function.

It just does not show in my computer and I cannot access the information on it. I tried downloading some other drivers and disk management tools, but nothing appears to be working, I still have to take it from the caddy and plug it direct into the desktop. Just can't do that yet as the desktop is being used for some rather important work and if I took that apart and messed it up, I think I would be divorced. Have to wait until partner is finished with the desktop.

 

Some good news, I have managed to recover my address books, music library and a large amount of my pics. I am amazed at how much stuff I have uploaded during the years and I was able to recover my addresses from my iPhone. Forgot that iTunes does a computer to iPhone sync.

I think the backup drive is dead. So I may have to just look around for someone who can do data recovery without costing me the earth.

Thanks for your help.

Lee