Old Freecom External HDD Not Found When Plugged Into Asus Laptop

[D M]

Hello,

My Freecom external HDD is not showing at all when plugged into any of the USB ports on my ASUS laptop running Windows 8.1; it's not showing in the Devices and Drives section, Device Manager, Disk Management, Devices and Printers.

When plugged in to the wall power socket and turned on the light on the HDD comes on and a whirring sound can be heard, so to some degree it is working.

It also doesn't work when plugged into my HP Chromebook.

The last time it worked was when plugged into my Windows 7 PC, which is now dead.

The drive is now quite old (5+ years) but I fear the drive is proper dead and I've lost years of multimedia. 🙁

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey D M. It does sound like the drive might have failed. Or this might be caused by a failing external enclosure in which case, you could try taking the drive out of the enclosure and connecting it directly to the computer either internally via a SATA connection or externally via a SATA to USB cable, to see if the drive is recognized. You could also try accessing the drive with Linux Live USB/CD or data recovery software such as the options given in this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
Your most reliable option remains a professional solution, such as a data recovery company, but that could often prove quite costly.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[D M]

Hey D M. It does sound like the drive might have failed. Or this might be caused by a failing external enclosure in which case, you could try taking the drive out of the enclosure and connecting it directly to the computer either internally via a SATA connection or externally via a SATA to USB cable, to see if the drive is recognized. You could also try accessing the drive with Linux Live USB/CD or data recovery software such as the options given in this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html
Your most reliable option remains a professional solution, such as a data recovery company, but that could often prove quite costly.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks for your detailed reply, at least I have a few options to ponder.
EDIT: I tried the free Mini Tool Power Data Recovery and again the drive doesn't appear after the scan. I'm trying to hold out hope that it's Windows 8/Chromebook that's the issue.

 

[D M]

Finally got round to fixing this, turned out the HDD was totally dead, but despite that a repair guy was able to retrieve all the data.