Hard Drive Not Found Anywhere Except in 'Safely Remove Hardware' List?

[mctureen]

My friend has an external hard drive that all of a sudden can't be found by pretty much any machine. It doesn't show up in BIOS or on my Mac or in my VMWare Virtual Windows. So, the first thing I did was take it out of its enclosure and hook it up to a new controller, but still no dice. Also, now that it's out of its enclosure I can hear it making an odd clicking sound? I'd be 100% willing to just tell my friend that the disk is dead, but its name appears in VMWARE. When I plug it into my Mac while VMWARE is running, a pop up asks if I want to open it in Windows or Mac, as is my setting for USB Media:

Then, it appears in the 'Safely Remove Hardware' List:

But it doesn't appear at all in Disk Management:

In Device Manager it doesn't list it as a Hard Drive, which makes sense:

But it does appear as a USB Mass storage device:

The mass storage device is the controller, right? But that doesn't account for how VMWARE and Windows both see the drive as being connected, as evident by how VMWARE has the name of the drive, both in the pop-up and in the toolbar:

Like I said, I'm like 90% sure it's a dead hard drive, but the fact VMWARE sees the name(with both controllers) seems odd, so I'm hoping, for my friend's sake, the data's redeemable.

 

[mctureen]

So, I just kind of assumed ASMedia AS2105 was the name of the drive, but I just plugged in both of the controllers at once, without the drive connected to either, and they both popped up as ASMedia AS2105. In conclusion, I think the drive's dead. Probably like 99% sure at this point. Yea I actually just texted my friend and the drive's name is not anything close to ASMedia AS2105. That must be like a firmware thing that VMWARE uses for USB ports? I don't know-I've never encountered it before.

 

[nukemaster]

ASMedia AS2105 is a USB to SATA bridge inside the enclosure.

I would recommend trying on another system if you can.

NTFS drives are native to Windows, but should still be readable.

When a drive fails many strange things just like this can in fact happen.

VMware does its own thing when sharing hardware so this is the reason I recommend trying on another Windows system if you can. If you want to try to get files off the drive and it is out of warranty, I recommend you open the enclosure and see if you can place the drive inside of a desktop computer to attempt recovery. This has worked on many drives that had an issue with the usb -> sata or ide controller.

 

[popatim]

It sounds like the drive's controller bd is ok but is unable to read the platters to me, which often generates unusual clicking noises.