Question What is the issue with my external hard disk - PCB, Platters or simple Disk formatting

[aby452]

One fine day Win 7 displayed “Do you want to scan & fix removable drive G:” prompt. I check marked both subsequent boxes on the prompt and clicked Scan & Fix. After complete execution of the Scan & Fix (after 12 hrs approx) my Portable 1TB WD Elements SE was shown as Unallocated, Not Initialized & Unknown in the Disk Management.
Since then external hard disk is unusable. Even today in Win 10, when connected to USB 2.0 port the LED on the External Hard Disk lights up steadily. Taskbar displays safely remove icon. Disk management displays 2TB of unallocated space even though external hard disk is of 1TB capacity. But, file explorer doesn’t displays any external hard disk. There is no spinning or clicking sound from the external hard disk. Is this an issue that can be fixed by printed circuit board (pcb) replacement or it requires opening up the hard disk drive platters? If I assign a drive letter in disk management and format the drive then can I still recover the data on the drive?
Videos and pictures of the external hard disk drive - https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnDteRJon3rDhWL4lhDWc48QI-Yv?e=c1jKwg

 

[SteveRX4]

My guess is that the drive is faulty.

Can you check it again in another PC using diskcheck - windows explorer, (drive) Properties, Tools Check.

 

[SkyNetRising]

or it requires opening up the hard disk drive platters?

Do not ever do that. This destroys any mechanical hard drive. It can be opened only in specialized clean room.

If I assign a drive letter in disk management and format the drive then can I still recover the data on the drive?

Do you absolutely need to recover data from it?

If yes, then you'll need a new drive with same capacity as original drive. Then you can use data recovery software to recover data from it.
Try getdataback. Demo allows checking, if anything can be recovered. Full version is not free though.
https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

If no, then try initializing the drive, create a new partition and format it. Do this only, if you don't need data to be recovered.

 

[aby452]

Do not ever do that. This destroys any mechanical hard drive. It can be opened only in specialized clean room.


Do you absolutely need to recover data from it?

If yes, then you'll need a new drive with same capacity as original drive. Then you can use data recovery software to recover data from it.
Try getdataback. Demo allows checking, if anything can be recovered. Full version is not free though.
https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

If no, then try initializing the drive, create a new partition and format it. Do this only, if you don't need data to be recovered.

When I attempt to initialize the drive in disk management, it displays an error message "Access is denied". In Win 7, it displays "disk is write protected".

in DISKPART, list disk displays the disk and all attributes for this disk are not read only i.e. all attributes have value as No. List volume doesn't display any entry for this disk

 

[aby452]

My guess is that the drive is faulty.

Can you check it again in another PC using diskcheck - windows explorer, (drive) Properties, Tools Check.

Please ellaborate "faulty". Is it a PCB issue or something to do with drive heads and platters?
Checking another PC (1 PC had win 10 and another had win 7) has same results.