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(Please Help) Unable to Access WD External Hard Drive (Resolved)

Internet Citizen

Junior Member
Aug 25, 2017
2
0
36
I have a 2 TB Western Digital External Hard Drive (Model - My Book). A couple of months back, it suddenly stopped working. I was very busy then and so couldn't focus on fixing it. Now I want to resolve this issue and hence seeking your help.

Current state of the drive -
  • The LED switches on
  • I could feel the drive spinning when I touch the hard disk
  • No weird sounds or cracks from the drive
  • The drive appaers in the USB removal area (http://imgur.com/JxpyRTY) but not in File/Windows Explorer (http://imgur.com/A59FKhE)
  • The drive shows as "Unallocated" in the Disk Manager. (http://imgur.com/ocWjPOL)
  • If I memory serves me right, earlier when the drive initially stopped working, it was showing as "RAW" in the Disk Manager. In my eagerness to fix the issue, I downloaded "MiniTool Partition Wizard" and clciked "Rebuild MBR". I don't know what it is but I selected it. That's the only action I took until today after the drive stopped working
  • I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities application and ran the available tests. The drive passed the SMART test without any issues.(http://imgur.com/uNJPbvm)
  • To troubleshoot, I changed the power cable, USB Cable and tested it. No success so far
The drive had around 1800 GB of data before it stopped working. I would be very thankful if you can help me acccess the drive
 

C1

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2008
2,396
114
106
Sounds like something happened to the NTFS file table. A bad connector could cause something like that.

Try some of the Raymond tools to effect file recovery : https://www.raymond.cc/blog/top-10-free-data-recovery-software/

Before I would use that drive again, rerun a scan test on it but twist the connector gently at various times during the test to see if you can cause a fault. You could have a bad (ie, loose connector) or worse, a connector terminal solder break on the circuit card inside the HDD case.

Good luck !
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,298
12,818
136
I have a 2 TB Western Digital External Hard Drive (Model - My Book). A couple of months back, it suddenly stopped working. I was very busy then and so couldn't focus on fixing it. Now I want to resolve this issue and hence seeking your help.

Current state of the drive -
  • The LED switches on
  • I could feel the drive spinning when I touch the hard disk
  • No weird sounds or cracks from the drive
  • The drive appaers in the USB removal area (http://imgur.com/JxpyRTY) but not in File/Windows Explorer (http://imgur.com/A59FKhE)
  • The drive shows as "Unallocated" in the Disk Manager. (http://imgur.com/ocWjPOL)
  • If I memory serves me right, earlier when the drive initially stopped working, it was showing as "RAW" in the Disk Manager. In my eagerness to fix the issue, I downloaded "MiniTool Partition Wizard" and clciked "Rebuild MBR". I don't know what it is but I selected it. That's the only action I took until today after the drive stopped working
  • I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities application and ran the available tests. The drive passed the SMART test without any issues.(http://imgur.com/uNJPbvm)
  • To troubleshoot, I changed the power cable, USB Cable and tested it. No success so far
The drive had around 1800 GB of data before it stopped working. I would be very thankful if you can help me acccess the drive
same thing happened to my friends' My Book. I went and took the drive out of the case and hooked it up in my system. It showed up as unallocated. I bought Easus Data Recovery and used their guide:

https://www.easeus.com/storage-media-recovery/fix-unallocated-external-hard-drive.html

I assume other recovery software would work as well as long as it supports large file sizes.
 

Internet Citizen

Junior Member
Aug 25, 2017
2
0
36
Thanks everyone for the help. Recovered some data with Recovery Software and formatted the drive. Everything is fine now.