External Hard Drive Stopped Showing Up In My Computer

samo231

Junior Member
Mar 20, 2012
2
0
0
I've been trying to fix it for over 10 days now, and I tried lots of things but nothing seems to work
frown.gif
, so I hope that you can help me.


  • System Info (If Needed):-
- Operation System: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-Bit).
- Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth P67 (1 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR3 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394).
- CPU: QuadCore Intel Core i7-2600K, 3500 MHz (35 x 100).
- Memory: 8168 MB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM).
- Disk Drive: WDC WD20EARS-00J99B0 (2000 GB, SATA-II).
- GPU: ATI Radeon™ HD 5770
- USB 2.0: 8 Ports.
- USB 3.0: 2 Ports.


  • Problem:-
My external hard drive stopped showing up in My Computer, but it was working fine before.


  • Possible Causes:-
1- I think "And I'm NOT Sure" this happened after I Unplugged it without using "Safely Remove Hardware", I'm Totally aware that unplugging it while it's in use could damage it, but when I tried to "Safely Remove It" it told me "Windows can't stop your device Because a program is still using it", and I was in a hurry, so I unplugged it without using "Safely Remove Hardware".

2- Few Days before it stop working, it was getting slower and sometimes it hangs.


  • External Hard Drive Condition:-
- it's Samsung S2 Portable (640GB).
454121.jpg

- I think I bought it from about 1-1.5 years ago.
- It's out of warranty.
- I'm Not using it that much, maybe 1-2 hours per day and sometimes I don't use it at all for several days/weeks.
- Content: all my family pictures & videos (NO backup anywhere else), I thought it would be safer here in case any damage happened to my desktop hard drive. but i Guess I was wrong.
- No Physical Damage.
- When I plug it, I hear it spinning and it's light is on.
- I hear a weird intermittent constant "Sound" and it's NOT loud, MAYBE It's a "Clicking" sound, But I'm not sure.


  • Things I Tried:-
- I checked All USB Ports and it's all working fine with other devices.
- It Doesn't show up in "Disk Management", So solutions related to "Disk Management" Won't work.
- I Cleaned up and removed old USB storage drivers and replugged it, but it didn't work.
- I connected it to another PC, it didn't work there too.
- I tried Different "USB Cable"
- I was always checking it with "BitDefender Total Security 2011" For Viruses or any kind of infections and it was clean.
- I tried to check it for errors, but as it's not recognized I can't check it.
- I was Defragmenting it with "DisKeeper 2011" from time to time.
- I tried to use "Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) v5.1.1" to recover the data, and i used this Guide "How to Create an Image of a Crashed Hard Drive using the UBCD, dd-rescue and P2 eXplorer", and when I reached to "Step 3 - Identifying your Hard Drive" I couldn't Identify it and I couldn't know it "Path", because it wasn't showing up in "Mount Devices" window, because as I said It's not recognized.


  • So What I'm Asking For Is:-

1- Is there a way to fix my External Hard Drive and make it work again?
If Not...
2- Is there a way to make it recognizable so i can recover the data using "DD-Rescue"?
If Not...
3- Is there any other way to recover the data from my External Hard Drive?
and...
4- I tried to open my External Hard Drive "case" but I couldn't, and I was afraid to go any farther So i Don't damage it. So is there any safe way to open it?

Thanks
 

Jman13

Senior member
Apr 9, 2001
811
0
76
What's inside? Would it be easy to open the case? (carefully?) If it's like most dedicated external drives, it's just an internal drive with a connection and some communication for the USB. If it's a 2.5" standard hard drive interfaced in a (semi-permanent) enclosure, you might try taking the drive out and connecting the bare drive internally to your machine. If it's the USB hardware that failed and not the drive, you'd be able to use the drive in your system.

If that fails (or if the drive is directly wired to USB rather than a SATA drive that plugs into the USB hardware), you may need to send it to someone for data retrieval (which would be $$$, but they'd likely be able to get your important data off).

I'm sure you are aware of it now, but ALWAYS back up your most important files. I use cloud backup in addition to making somewhat regular BD-R backups of my most important files. Since my photo archive is 1.2TB, I can't easily backup that whole thing on BD-R, but I do "selects" of the best photos and back those up...works out to about 40GB a year. I also have an external drive at work with all my photos from 2001-2010, and another external at home with more recent local backup, plus the cloud backup which has EVERYTHING important to me, and is updated automatically (so new photos get uploaded the day after I put them on my machine). Well worth the $3 a month.
 

samo231

Junior Member
Mar 20, 2012
2
0
0
Thanks Jman13 for replying,

- First, I don't want to try anything risky, because as I said this External hard drive contains all my family pictures & Videos and I don't have any backup, so I don't want to destroy it and kill any hope of retrieving the data.

- Second, about the "Data Recovery Expert" I asked A friend of mine about them and he told me that they are very very expensive and it's way cheaper to buy a new one, and he told me that the reason they are very expensive that they use a very expensive tools and the recovery process itself might take several days and in some cases weeks. so at this moment I'm not considering give it to an expert.
 

Old Hippie

Diamond Member
Oct 8, 2005
6,361
1
0
Second, about the "Data Recovery Expert" I asked A friend of mine about them........ so at this moment I'm not considering give it to an expert.
I see no other options for you.

Most of the time data recovery cannot be done thru USB.

Go ahead and destroy the case to remove the drive and connect it directly to the motherboard to have ANY chance of recovery.

FYI....NEVER purchase those prebuilt external drives. ALWAYS buy whatever drive you want and install it into an external case. You'll be able to remove the drive for troubleshooting and won't void the warranty.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
One reason I highly recommend Seagate GoFlex external drives.

1) They don't force their software down your throat and prevent you from deleting it by embedding in the firmware, virtual CD partitions, etc. It's just a folder, you can delete it if you want.

2) The detachable cables are standard SATA connections and not proprietary.