Can't access external hard drive

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Dear experts, I need help. Your consultation is highly appreciated.

Background : I have WD external hard disk model # : WD800BEVE-00UYT0 (external USB2.0 hard disk) purchased in year 2008, but used not more than 10 times. It is working fine all this while.

Problem description :

Lately when I plug the USB cable to my laptop. the LED light on hard disk is light up and looks like my laptop is detecting it. Yet, I could not access all the files & folders in the external hard drive. Also heard some rotation / clicking sound inside hard disk during initializing and goes off afterwards.
Try to go to Disk Management and observe Unknown / Unallocated Disk 1". Attached is the printscreen.
https://app.box.com/s/e7m1yhx2kn9ka9kt1xub

Pls kindly help to consult the probable solution as I have lot of important files inside my hard disk, many thanks!

Best Rgds,
KH

2

khsoon,

Unfortunately, the screen capture you kindly shared while also considering the clicking sound you described point out to a physical malfunction when added together. Have you tried changing the USB cable and testing the disk drive on other systems to confirm if you also obtain the same results?

3

Hi J Staff,

Thanks! I had tried using the same USD cable with other external hard drive and it worked. Also I tried the problematic hard disk in other laptops and confirmed it could not be access too.

Any free data recovery software that you can receommend to retrieve my data from the faulty hard drive? Thanks!

Rgds,

4

Recuva is a free one  http://www.piriform.com/recuva  Sometimes booting from a Linux Live CD will allow you to recover data.

Joe

1 Like
5

Hi Joe_S,

Thanks so much for your recommendation! Will try the “recuva” and let you know the outcome… Thx!

Rgds,

6

khsoon,

Hopefully your data will be safely recovered.

7

Hi Joe_S,

Had tried to scan the data recovery using Recuva software “On my media card”, but it could not work.

I encountered “No drives were scanned, because none matches with the filter” error message.

Also tried to initialize disk, but wouldn’t work due to “The device is not ready”.

Pls help to advise possible solution, thanks!

Rgds,