External HDD slows down the PC, shows up as Local Disk and doesn't open up

[LNatsu]

Sorry if it has already been resolved before.

I have a half filled Seagate BackupPlus Slim 2TB external HDD which I bought last year. Today, while copying some files (around 180GB) from my friends' external HDD to mine, the copying process hanged in between. Then I forcefully removed the HDD and reinserted it, so now it shows up as. "Local Disk D" and under it there is no blue/red bar which shows how much of the drive has been used (Win 10). Also when I try opening it or ejecting it, the computer stops responding. Tried doing chkdsk by cmd but when I enter the command no message is displayed. Also when I tried doing it by going to properties it gave an error saying "Windows is unable to access this drive".
Also, it shows up the proper name under device manager and I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, but nothing happened.

Edit: I tried it on another Win 10 pc as well, same problem and it shows "Local Disk D" only, not any other letter.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there LNatsu,

Unfortunately, the drive is failing/has failed.

How is the device recognized by Disk Management?

I believe you can try a couple of things:
- Attach it with a different cable.
- In case the issue persists, you can see if you can access it with some data recovery tool.
- Test it afterwards: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

If the drive can't be accessed by software tools, you will need to contact a data recovery company in case the data stored on the drive is really important.

Is the drive under warranty? In case it is, I believe that you should be able to RMA it.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[LNatsu]

Disk Management stops responding when I connect the drive. I'll try the other fixes which you recommended.

Btw will connecting the drive to a computer running a Mac or Linux fix this problem!?

Don't know why the drive failed, it's only been an year and hasn't been used much.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Well, different OSes respond in a different way to failing drives. So, you can try that. It would not fix the issue, but the drive may be accessible. Actually, you can boot Ubuntu from a flash drive or a CD and see if the drive would be accessible. Check this thread on Ubuntu Live CD: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Mechanical drives could just fail. It could be in a day, or it could be in 10 years. You can't really know that. This is why, one should always keep the important data stored on several places.

I believe the drive should be under warranty.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[LNatsu]

Yeah it's under warranty...I just have to ensure that I kept the bill receipt safe

Fingers crossed!

 

[LNatsu]

Ok now I tried it on my friends' Macbook Pro and it works fine. Though it took around 30-40 seconds to get detected. Also, it shows up that the drive is read only so I am not able to delete any files or copy something on the drive. What could be the problem now?

 

[D_Know_WD]

I believe it would be nice to boot from a flash drive with Ubuntu and see what happens over there.
As for the Mac, I don't really know whether the drive has a file system that is compatible with Mac(NTFS is not supported by Mac).

D_Know_WD