Hard Drive can't be accessed, right-clicked, recogniced etc

[Darkethus]

I was asked to fix a persons external hard drive, a WD Elements 2TB. The External part didnt have good connection to the internal harddrive within, and so, it didn't work to access on the pc.

I took it out of the casing and hooked it up internally with a SATA data and SATA power cable.

The Drive is called "Local Disk (F" on my PC and I have two other drives, a SSD C:, a D: which is 1TB.

I can't access the drive, I can't right-click it and it doesn't show up in Disk Manager, staying on "connecting to virtual disk service" in the bottom.

If I click the drive to get into it, it frezzes Windows Explorer, sometimes removing my taskbar and making my background black. If I right-click the drive, the same thing happenes, windows explorer becomes unreponsive.

It doesn't show up in recovery programs either. If I have the drive hooked up in my pc when I boot the pc, it takes really long on the Motherboard booting screen and gets stuck on the windows booting screen.

The drive doesn't show up in the boot manager on the motherboard. The only way to start the computer is to unplug the drive and plug it in again when the pc is started.

It is also making my entire pc function strangly. If I try to install programs or crate new folders on the desktop or excract a program for a zip or rar, it makes my pc freeze and windows Explorer crash or give me error messages like "too many 16-bit programs are running" and that chrome cant be opened because of server issues.

All in all, my real question is this. How [*****] are the files on the Hard Drive, there are pictures on there all the way from 2004 until now. Anyone got any ways I can extract the files, get the drive to work or shall I give her the sad truth?

Sorry for the long post, I hope gave good information, and I hope someone can help!

If there is anything you don't understand or need in ways of information, please tell me!

[Moderator: Four letter word removed. No bad language allowed on THF, it's a family forum used by minors - - Please remember to keep it clean!]

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

I'm afraid only a professional data recovery service can get any data off it, but I warn you that it's mega expensive because they cater mostly to those who can easily afford the high cost - - the big companies for whom sensitive data is more important that money.

It's a great pity because it could have so easily have been avoided by keeping the data backed up on at least one other drive.

I feel the pain because I've been there too - - learned my lesson the hard way as well.

 

[Emerald]

It might be that the data is encrypted via the USB bridge insight the case.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Darkethus,

Sorry that you are having some issues with your WD drive.

I would agree with Phillip Corcoran and say that your safest bet for recovering the data would be to contact a data recovery company.

Apart from that, WD Elements is not a hardware encrypted model, so accessing the data when attached internally should not be an issue. Yet, this does not work in your case.

One thing you can try is to boot up Ubuntu either from a CD or a flash drive and see whether you will be able to access the drive and whether the system will hang: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
In case it does, then there is most probably something physically wrong with the HDD and you will need check out some data recovery companies in order to retrieve the data.

You can check WD's Data Recovery Partners out: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Zx2cIr

D_Know_WD