Can't Access Hard Drive!? Won't load/see it at all

[kingbowness]

Evening everyone. I'm running Windows 8.1 here on a desktop. I've tried Diskpart, Gparted, Windows Rescue and they have failed!

I have a Seagate Backup Plus SRD0SP0 External Hard Drive. It is easy to take the internal hard drive out of the USB 3.0 enclosure and drop into computer as regular SATA HDD.

While in USB 3.0 enclosure and using that interface. The first few things I tried were in using Windows Disk Management tool by pressing 'Manage' in My Computer. This however would crash that tool, Windows Explorer, and won't allow for the computer to shut down every time.

Next, I tried different variations of having the hard drive in USB 3.0 and SATA plug mode but they all have failed. Anytime the drive is plugged in, it will crash the Disk Management tool or Windows explorer that is trying to modify/scan it.

After that, I booted up a Windows Rescue Disk and hit advanced settings for the command prompt. I tried DiskPart here but same problem. It will pretty much freeze DiskPart and won't let it load until I disconnect the hard drive.

Windows computer has problems booting up and shutting down while this problematic hard drive is connected. (SATA plugs are set to hot-pluggable in BIOS)

I have Ubuntu on my laptop and I installed GParted to try to access and format this drive. No luck. Gparted also freezes and goes into an infinite 'scanning' loop and never gets to showing any drives unless I unplug this hard drive.

I'm currently downloading Ultimate Boot CD, Hiren's Boot CD, and Knoppix.

Any suggestions!? It would be nice if I could repair and access the files but right now. I just want to format it so I can get it 'working' and readable and then using something like Test Disk later to recover files (as I haven't written anything to the external hard drive).

Help?

EDIT1:
Downloaded and using Ultimate Boot CD now.

In Parted Magic now booted from Ultimate Boot CD. I've run the program called 'Erase Disk' and did an MBR Erase and got confirmation message that it was done. Then I tried to open GParted again. No luck, still stuck on 'scanning devices'.

The external drive (currently plugged as SATA) also doesn't show up as an option to be mounted at all. It does show up in GSmartControl program which shows SMART Status though. It notes errors in 'Reading' but that is about it.

Ran TestDisk and also deleted MBR with it. Then tried to see if I could mount or open Gparted. Same results. Nothing.

In between every 'erase'. I've been trying to mount/see the drive and access with GParted. No luck every time.

EDIT2:
Running Erase Disk on Parted Magic again. This time I'm doing the internal erase feature.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, kingbowness!

Really amazing job with the troubleshooting so far, but unfortunately, it seems like your external HDD has failed. I'd suggest you to contact the manufacturer's customer support for assistance and any specific data recovery service recommendations. I'm afraid there's nothing more you can do about the hard drive at this point. Since all these tools didn't help you, it's possible that the damage in physical and it's something that cannot be fixed.

Best of luck! Keep me posted, though!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[kingbowness]

Welcome to the community, kingbowness!

Really amazing job with the troubleshooting so far, but unfortunately, it seems like your external HDD has failed. I'd suggest you to contact the manufacturer's customer support for assistance and any specific data recovery service recommendations. I'm afraid there's nothing more you can do about the hard drive at this point. Since all these tools didn't help you, it's possible that the damage in physical and it's something that cannot be fixed.

Best of luck! Keep me posted, though!
SuperSoph_WD

I've been a long time reader of Toms Hardware forums and decided to make an account today as I felt like I exhausted all my options.

I did initially felt like I had forgotten or was inept at troubleshooting as nothing was working. It's good to know that I did try almost everything.

There is no longer warranty on this hard drive. The data, while nice to have, wasn't critical. It's long gone as the 'Erase' program on Parted Magic filled the disk with 0s.

I believe I have fixed the drive though. I left the computer on overnight and did my last resort. I used the same Erase Disk program and this time used the Internal setting which uses the HDD's own secure erase function. This took 4 hours I believe (I was asleep)

I woke up this morning and unlike last time. The SMART short-self-test performed with no errors at all. And I was able to use GParted to make a ms-dos partition with FAT32 and put files on it.

I think I fixed it! Not sure about longevity of the drive though.

This was my boss's hard drive. In our office now. All our backup internal HDDs are new WD 1TB Blue's and we are also using a WD MyCloud 3TB! Gonna see how your WD products work instead this time.

Thanks again for the encouragement SuperSoph_WD!

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, kingbowness!

I'm glad you got your external HDD to work. However, I'd definitely keep an eye on it if I were you! Make sure that you always have a backup of the data that you store there. Even if at some point it fails, you'd still have your files intact somewhere else.

Thank you for your kind words regarding our products! I hope you are happy with whatever WD storage solution you choose to upgrade!
In case there's something wrong, you know where to find me and my colleagues in Tom's Hardware! 😀

Hope I was able to help out! Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD