exteranl hard drive

[hoops19]

My 3tb WD elements external hard drive was working fine and now all of a sudden within the last few days it's not being recognized in my computer but shows up as listed when i go into device manager. The light in the back of the hard drive just keeps blinking continuously unless i unplug it.

Is my hard drive dead or not ?

Any help would be great because i have a lot of files on here i would like to keep if possible,

 

[woodson75]

Back up your files asap.

Then try runnning Crystal Disk Info and Seatools on it, to see if anything obvious is wrong with the drive

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there hoops19,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁

Have you tried attaching the HDD with a different USB cable? In case you haven't, you can try that. I believe this model requires power cable as well right? I guess it will not hurt to use a different one as well.
In case the issue persists, you need to go to Disk Management and see whether and how is the drive recognized over there. If the drive is recognized over there but has damaged partitions and/or file system, you will need to use some sort of data recovery software in order to retrieve the data. Check this out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
After that, you can just test the drive with WD's DLG tool(both tests): http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=wwX1oc

In case the drive is not recognized by Disk Management, then there is something wrong with the enclosure or the HDD itself and you have a couple of options:
- Just RMA the drive.
- Contact a data recovery company in case the data stored on the drive is crucial: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=IVtkgT

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[hoops19]

Hi there hoops19,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁

Have you tried attaching the HDD with a different USB cable? In case you haven't, you can try that. I believe this model requires power cable as well right? I guess it will not hurt to use a different one as well.
In case the issue persists, you need to go to Disk Management and see whether and how is the drive recognized over there. If the drive is recognized over there but has damaged partitions and/or file system, you will need to use some sort of data recovery software in order to retrieve the data. Check this out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
After that, you can just test the drive with WD's DLG tool(both tests): http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=wwX1oc

In case the drive is not recognized by Disk Management, then there is something wrong with the enclosure or the HDD itself and you have a couple of options:
- Just RMA the drive.
- Contact a data recovery company in case the data stored on the drive is crucial: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=IVtkgT

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

The drive isn't being recognized in disk management either i had it confused with my other hard drive. Do you think taking the enclosure off and cleaning it would be the first step,

I have a lot of tv shows, music and movies on the drive so i would like to be able to keep them if possible.

Do you know if data recovery charges are expensive for 3tb of data ?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, you can do that at your own risk. Some users try that if nothing else works.
Keep in mind that this will void the warranty(if under any) and you may not be able to connect the drive internally(SATA + power cable) or externally(SATA to USB adapter + power cable) in case the drive comes with proprietary interface.

Unfortunately, in general, data recovery services are pricey. 🙁

D_Know_WD

 

[hoops19]

How about geek squad from Best Buy ? I know they will probably outsource it anyway but would it be cheaper doing it that way.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, I guess you can do that as well.

Hope everything goes well.
D_Know_WD