Fatal Device Error while Trying to Solve Missing Drive Issue in Disk Management

[OverTheMoon89]

I bought a $60 My Passport external hard drive with 1TB space and I've only used it to store games, (like steam and related games like that) so I unplug (eject it safely) it when I'm not playing them. I unplugged it from my computer for a day and then today when I tried to plug it back in to play a game, it didn't show up on my computer or in my libraries at all. and when I googled olutions, I went to disk management and it appear there as "Disk 1 Unknown" I tried to initialize it and it gave me a fatal device error.

I've tried ejecting it and plugging it back in, and restarting my computer.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, OverTheMoon89.

Sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with your HDD.

Is it safe to assume that you don't need the data since you've already tried to initialize the drive and since it was Steam games mostly? Basically it really sounds like the HDD might be in a bad situation. I'd recommend that you give it a try with a different USB cable and a different computer if possible, to see if the same thing happens.
If you don't need to recover data, you could try testing it with DLG (Data Lifeguard) by running both Quick and Extended tests and see what happens. Unfortunately, if the drive is shown as not initialized, there's a big chance that DLG might not be able to detect the HDD. Here's how to test it if it's recognized: How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD