WD Elements portable hard drive doesn't show up on my computer but shows up in device manager

[demuline]

So, I recently dropped my WD Elements hard drive and when I plugged it in my laptop, the light was blinking and it made this beeping sound for like a minute then it stopped (but the light still kept blinking). It says that the device is installed but it doesn't show up on my computer.

So, I went to the device manager and it's there! But, the thing is, it doesn't show up on my computer. And I tried uninstalling it then plugging it in. The same thing happens, the driver installs but it doesn't show up on my computer. There's not autoplay window asking me what I want to do with the drive.

So I go to disk management, right? And I get this a window telling me that "You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it." I clicked OK. Then another window popped up saying that "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

I have no idea what to do. Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks!

 

[popatim]

The short answer is it looks like you'll be buying a new harddrive.
The 'beeping' noise is not a good noise. HDD's dont have speakers and when the beep its usually a bad thing; like heads screetching along the platters attempting to read.

Since the drive wont be covered under warranty due to being dropped, were you interested in opening it up and looking ?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, demuline!

Unfortunately, you might have caused physical damage on the WD Elements.
You cannot fix it yourself because most probably some component inside the HDD itself have been misplaced.
Popatim is right, you should most probably be looking for a new drive.
It is true that dropping of the drive is not covered by the warranty and the WD Elements has no hardware encryption, so you could try taking it out of the external enclosure and plugging it internally using a SATA cable.
Hopefully the damage is in the enclosure and not within the HDD itself.
You can also try testing the drive with Data LifeGuard Diagnostics tool, so that you check up on the health and SMART status of the drive.
Here's a link to the utility: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=yg0oqX

Keep us posted!
SuperSoph_WD