old external 3T HDD wont be accessible Nothing I've read works yet

[kaahrl]

I think this screenshot explains what's happening pretty well Also notice that formatting it is not an answer as I have there 4 years work worth of data :

-first, you see that it show in Disk Management as "Disk 1" I've tried to give a letter to the unallocated but then it only mounts a seemingly empty 128 Mb disk, tried with FAT NFTS and any other option they give you, the same result.

-It appears in Device Manager as "WD Elements 107C USB Device" I've tried to enable, disable, uninstall reinstall, update drivers etc, Nothing. I also tried to download the WD drivers, WD Drive utilities, Data lifeguard (run a six hours scan that just froze the computer when finished)... Nothing.

-The most uplifting option was to go to diskpart.exe and do something there.. it happens to not appear there, I don't know how to make it appear if possible.
and of course, don't appear in the computer, otherwise, I won't be so stressed T_T

any ideas?

 

[engineer5261]

Did you originally use this disk on a different operating system? Might be worth using the same OS if you have it on another device. Perhaps try the drive in a friends PC?

How much is the data worth to you? You may have to send it to a data recovery house if it is out of warranty

 

[jsmithepa]

Making any kind of noise it wasn't there before? What does s.m.a.r.t. say?

 

[kaahrl]

Did you originally use this disk on a different operating system? Might be worth using the same OS if you have it on another device. Perhaps try the drive in a friends PC?

How much is the data worth to you? You may have to send it to a data recovery house if it is out of warranty

about a year using it with windows, no problem until now
that is the next solution

 

[kaahrl]

Making any kind of noise it wasn't there before? What does s.m.a.r.t. say?

no noise at all no
I just took it out of the box and conected it to my computer, SMART says ... all checkmarks green....T_T

 

[kaahrl]

I took it out of the enclosure and now im running the Data lifeward extended test, is gonna take 8 hours, yeah I dont even know what Im expecting the test to do, but i will share the results tomorrow. any further advice is greately recieved.

 

[Peter Martin]

Also consider cloud space to store backups like OneDrive. That way your computer and hard drive could blow up and you can get a new one and your data is still good

 

[JaredDM]

OK, here's some advice for you.

1. Be careful what you do with the drive removed from the enclosure. That little USB->SATA bridge board may handle hardware encryption, even if you never set a password. So if you do anything that writes data to it, you'll risk screwing up the encryption and may never get your data back in one piece.
2. It's possible that it's just that USB to SATA bridge board itself that is bad. If so you can actually just replace it using one with a matching 4060-xxxxx-xxx REV X board (fill in the x's with actual numbers). Don't worry, if the drive has encryption the key is actually stored in the drive itself.
3. It's also possible that your drive has a firmware malfunction, in which case you'll need a data recovery company to get the data back.

In any event, running Data Lifeguard is NOT GOING TO FIX YOUR DRIVE!!!! It is however putting a lot of unnecessary stress on it and might kill off any hope of getting back your data. You should IMMEDIATELY STOP RUNNING THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!