Question 4/4 WD 10TB Elements drives not showing

Jan 9, 2020
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Hi there,

I've bought and owned 4 X 10TB WD Elements external HDs for a few months now. I'm a videographer so need lots of space to store projects and footage.

Two of the 4 WD drives are no longer showing up when connected. I've tried to initialize them but get the message 'the request failed due to a fatal device hardware error'. I've gone into device manager and unchecked the 'allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' box too. Changed cables and ports as well to be sure.

I've also recently bought a top notch Dell laptop for remote editing so have been recently plugging my storage drives into the laptop. Are the drives buggered, or could this be something to do with my new Dell, or is there anything else I'm missing?

Really would appreciate the help. Thank you :)



UPDATE: It seems all four drives are currently doing the same thing. Even the two that okay moments before. They can't have all died at once surely.
 
"Initialising" your drive is data destructive.

Do the drives still spin up? Warranty notwithstanding, can you shuck one drive and connect it directly to a SATA port inside a desktop computer?

Can you see each drive's SMART report with CrystalDiskInfo?

Is it possible that you are killing the drives' USB ports with ESD? It would be safer to connect the drive to the USB port before powering on its AC adapter. This is because the "ground" pin of some 240VAC mains connected devices sits at 120VAC when floating (60VAC for 120VAC mains).
 
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