External HDD giving problems all of a sudden

[joshwin_aranha]

Hey guys, My 1TB Lenovo External HDD (USB 3.0) is all of a sudden giving me too many problems, i have a lot of important data on it that i want to keep, whenever i plug it into my system, i get the "USB-plugged in" notification sound (if thats what its called) it does show in explorer, but all i get is "Local Disk (G: )" when im sure the name of the Hard Drive is "zer0_1", also i cant see how much is the total or free space in it.

The Hard drive is not even a month old, it was working perfectly before, i cant think of anything specific that could have caused this, but unfortunately it does get worse, whenever i have the HDD connected (i always connect it to a USB 2.0 port, as i dont have any 3.0 ports in my PC), so whenever i have it connected, no other application seems to run properly, i double click on a lot of apps but nothing happens, but when i remove the HDD all of those apps that i double-clicked on start simultaneously, eg: I double click on CCleaner, nothing happens, i wait for about 20 mins, still nothing, but as soon as a un-plug the HDD the CCleaner app is up and running in no time, its almost as if it was waiting for the HDD to be removed.

The other Thing is, i cant even open Disk Management when the HDD is connected, whenever i try to open it, it just freezes, same happens with explorer.exe if i try opening the icon of the HDD in This PC, i tried getting inside the HDD by WinRar/7-Zip but both ended up crashing, worst part is, i connected it to my friend's Windows 7 system, and it gave a prompt to format it, which i really, REALLY dont want to. My Home PC is Windows 8.1 BTW.

Another thing, i had a spare Live-USB of elementary OS lying around, i booted into eOS and connected the HDD, but nothing came up, not even a notification, nothing, but whenever i connect it to any PC, (Windows or UNIX based) the little blue LED does light up, the diffrence if when i connect it to windows its just static, but when i connect it to eOS, its blinking as if something is being written into/read from the HDD.

Someone suggested me to change the cable, which i havent tried yet as i dont have a spare, this is my very first time working with Hard Drives so i have zero knowledge of whats up with it, another notable point is, in windows when the Drive is connected, Task Manager reports 100% usage of the Drive which is Very odd.

This is my very first time actually posting on TomsHardware, i have always turned to this community for solutions to everyday problems and not once has it ever disappointed me, but i didnt actually find anything relating to this, so i posted this. I have attached a few snapshots for reference.

Here is the album URL too just in case Imgur

Thanks, Joshwin.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there joshwin_aranha,

Yeah, it would be nice if you could attach the drive with a different USB cable.

In case the issue persists though, you will need to try using some data recovery for DOS tool(as your system can't operate properly). Another thing you can check out is the Ubuntu Live CD approach. Just boot up Ubuntu either from a CD or a flash drive and see whether you will be able to access the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Keep in mind that mechanical drives sometimes just fail. So, you need to keep your data stored on at lest two places.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[joshwin_aranha]

Hi there joshwin_aranha,

Yeah, it would be nice if you could attach the drive with a different USB cable.

In case the issue persists though, you will need to try using some data recovery for DOS tool(as your system can't operate properly). Another thing you can check out is the Ubuntu Live CD approach. Just boot up Ubuntu either from a CD or a flash drive and see whether you will be able to access the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Keep in mind that mechanical drives sometimes just fail. So, you need to keep your data stored on at lest two places.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

Umm, i posted above in the 4th Para tha i had a spare of eOS lying around and stuff, and im pretty sure that my copy of eOS is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and the drive didnt show up in this live session of eOS, i could still try it on Ubuntu though if you say so, and yeah the other cable is kinda, on its way to me so ill try that too, and i was warned that i should backup up my data, and the irony is, i got this Drive as a backup to my primary 2TB internal, and currently my Home PC has no operating system, and all my PC's data was IN THIS HDD as i wanted to tidy up my partitions, so this issue came up at such an unfortunate time, so it screwed up everything

 

[D_Know_WD]

Oh yeah, sorry about that. I guess it will not hurt to try Ubuntu as well. Also, you can try using some data recovery for DOS tools. I believe there are some threads on that in the forum.
In case these do not work, then there may be something physically wrong with the enclosure or the HDD itself.(assuming you've tried a different cable) In this case, your safest bet for recovering the data is to contact a data recovery company. Apart from that, you can:
- Just RMA the drive as it is a new one. In this case you will not get your data.
- Some users take the drive out of the enclosure and attach it internally in similar cases. If there is something wrong with the enclosure this could work. On the other hand, this will void the warranty and may not work in case the drive is hardware encrypted or has proprietary connectors.

D_Know_WD