External Drives No Longer Working, Computer Slows Down When Plugged In

[Swiss Helvetica]

Howdy.
I have an external hard drive dock that holds two drives with a maximum size of 3'5" drives.
Both of the slots are currently occupied by a backup drive and a drive to carry media and videogames. I am using this setup to make it easier for drive swapping in my NZXT S340 so I don't have to open my computer up everytime.

Whenever I startup my computer I sometimes forget to turn on the dock and some of my programs no longer work because of it. Today I turned it on while the computer was running, and the drives weren't displaying size information in the Computer window, and the window is constantly loading without end. The two drives appear in the Device Manager as HDD USB Device, and the dock doesn't appear at all. Under Portable Devices category however, they appear as their assigned letters and two extra items with the name WPD FileSystem Volume Driver appear, but they all have yellow exclamation marks on them.

When plugged in directly through SATA or an external USB and power board taken from an external drive case, the computer slows down completely and I can't open anything at all. As soon as the hard drive is unplugged however, it all goes back to normal. I cannot open CMD through the start menu, I have to use the Run window to open it. And if I use CHKDSK while the drives are connected it won't do anything at all, until I unplug them. I have left CHKDSK running for 3 hours and it doesn't budge at all.

I doubt it's age that has caused this, just pure stupidity of not safely ejecting the drives before I turn off the computer. I am hoping I am able to recover the drives with the files still on them. I tried doing the CHKDSK method mentioned everywhere but it simply won't work.

I have tried looking at the drives on multiple computers and they all have the same thing happen to them on each computer, no matter how it's plugged in. The only time the computer doesn't slow down is when they're in the dock plugged into a computer with a USB cable.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, Swiss Helvetica!

Unfortunately, it seems like the HDDs might have failed if they have the same behavior on multiple computers! 🙁 Since you are able to use your system without any hiccups while they are connected to the docking station, you should try running their brand-specific diagnostic tools from the HDD manufacturer's official website. You can also refer to some third-party testing tool suggestion from the community. These utilities will help you determine the health and SMART status of your HDDs.
If you have important data on them that is not backed up, I'd strongly advise you to consider contacting a professional data recovery company for assistance. They are your best bet on getting any of your files back. In the future, make sure you keep your data stored in multiple locations and always safely remove your external devices.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

Hey there, Swiss Helvetica!

Unfortunately, it seems like the HDDs might have failed if they have the same behavior on multiple computers! 🙁 Since you are able to use your system without any hiccups while they are connected to the docking station, you should try running their brand-specific diagnostic tools from the HDD manufacturer's official website. You can also refer to some third-party testing tool suggestion from the community. These utilities will help you determine the health and SMART status of your HDDs.
If you have important data on them that is not backed up, I'd strongly advise you to consider contacting a professional data recovery company for assistance. They are your best bet on getting any of your files back. In the future, make sure you keep your data stored in multiple locations and always safely remove your external devices.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

Thanks for the info, I'll be contacting a professional data recovery company near me and hopefully something can be done.

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

It turns out the data recovery is rather expensive and that seems to be not an option, considering that I could use the money to just buy more hard drives although I'll be missing the data.
Do you know of any options that I could do to possibly recover the data?
I tried the programs you linked but they won't launch when the hard drives are connected, and when I plug the drives in whilst the programs are open they don't appear on them.
I tried the CMD on the Windows installer USB I have and the drives are only scanned but it shows no checking at all, and when I tried the same method on my working drives it progresses further with an actual repair attempt.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hello again, Swiss Helvetica!

I'd strongly recommend you use a professional company for assistance. Unfortunately, if the HDDs are physically corrupted, you won't be able to recover the data successfully with any third-party recovery tool. The fact that you encounter such difficulties with the proper detection of the HDDs means that you might not even be able to use these data-retrieving software utilities.

To avoid these data-loss headaches, make sure you always backup your data in the future.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

Funnily enough they are my backups, which is very annoying. Was just using the extra space for games and movies.

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

I'm willing to just wipe the drives now. Do you know of any good applications that require you to boot to a flash drive? Because nothing will launch when the drives are connected.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hello again, Swiss Helvetica!

Have you tried running the diagnostics while booted in Safe Mode?
However, you could try using a DOS version of an HDD diagnostic utility that will allow you to run the tests and check up on the health and SMART status of the drives without booting into Windows. You should refer to the HDD manufacturer's official website again and find this particular software. In order to test the hard drives, you'd have to create a bootable flash/USB drive with it and follow the instructions.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

Thanks, I'll try that tomorrow.

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

I didn't manage to get anywhere with the WD one, I'll try look for the Seagate one.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

I didn't manage to get anywhere with the WD one, I'll try look for the Seagate one.

This seems pretty unfortunate, Swiss Helvetica! 🙁 I'm sorry to hear about it.
I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself but if the data on those drives is that important to you, I'd strongly recommend you to consider contacting a professional data recovery company for assistance. They have the tools, the safe environment and the knowledge to do the best they can to extract your data from the HDDs.

In the future, please consider keeping at least two copies of your data stored in different locations. Having only one copy of your files is not considered a backup solution. 🙁

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

The problem I have with the data recovery services in my area is that they are incredibly expensive, I'm trying to find a way to wipe them now instead because the data wasn't really important, it can always be downloaded again.
The WD software you linked was very good, I used it to test my working drives. I left it running on another computer overnight with the drive connected to hopefully get through the programs hanging but it didn't work out.
I'll contact the recovery services to see if they do proper wipes of hard drives and hopefully they aren't expensive in that department.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

The problem I have with the data recovery services in my area is that they are incredibly expensive, I'm trying to find a way to wipe them now instead because the data wasn't really important, it can always be downloaded again.
The WD software you linked was very good, I used it to test my working drives. I left it running on another computer overnight with the drive connected to hopefully get through the programs hanging but it didn't work out.
I'll contact the recovery services to see if they do proper wipes of hard drives and hopefully they aren't expensive in that department.

If you wish to format the HDDs, you can use that same utility (Data LifeGuard Diagnostics). It also allows you to erase all the data on the hard drives. WRITING ZEROS will get the HDDs back to their out-of-the-box condition (fully erased). This takes longer, but helps to ensure that no data on the drive can later be retrieved using Data Recovery methods. This method is designed to wipe sensitive data from their disk. You can refer to our knowledge base article on How to low level format your HDDs.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

The same problem happens with the programs hanging though, which was what I was trying to do last night on another computer, I managed to get the program up once with the drive connected and I tried to do a full sweep on the drive but the program ended up freezing. After that, even after restarting the PC, the program wouldn't launch at all unless I took the drive out.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

I'm afraid there's nothing more that you can do about that drive. It's dead. 🙁 It seems that the hard drive is severely damaged and that's why you are unable to even erase it. I would not be concerned about anybody else managing to access it either.

Either way, I hope I was helpful. Good luck.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Swiss Helvetica]

I'm going to try my luck with the data recovery service and if that doesn't work I'll just save for another two drives.