So I have an external HDD that spins up and I can see it when I open my computer but I am unable to access it. Is this thing down for the count or do I have any options left?
What is happening when you try to access it? What message(s) do you see? What does it look like under Disk Management?
Right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management. What is the status of the drive. wat0114 beat me to it.
Under disk management it lists the drive as healthy. Also says 298gb capacity with 298gb free space. That's weird cause the thing is almost completely full. When I try to access it I get the following error message G:\ is not accessible the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error
Also it's strange that the drive shows as healthy in disk management cause when I run the western digital diagnostic tool it fails the smart scan. Here is a quick test result Quick test on drive 2 did not complete Status code = 07 (failed read test element), failure checkpoint = 65 (error log test)
Hmmm my old desktop (laptop is my primary pc) is freezing any time I try to open up my computer. I was troubleshooting this a few weeks ago and was able to get it to show up. If I remember right it was doing the same thing as when I have the drive plugged in on my laptop.
Ok so when the damaged HDD is plugged into the desktop it spins up but freezes my "my computer" but when I unplug the bad HDD "my computer" works fine on the desktop. Unfortunately these are the only two pc's I own. The data is not that important. That being said I would like to recover it but if it can't be done oh well. If in the process of getting the drive to work again (if that's indeed even possible) I lose the data I can live with that.
Would it be possible to remove the drive from the enclosure and install in your desktop? If not, and the data is not that important, try a reformat. You might also want to try easeus data recovery. Free for up to 1GB of data. http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm
FWIW, after a SATA drive failed in my old Win XP x86 machine, I managed to read some data from it (albeit very slowly) in a Win Server 2008 x64 machine. If possible, it might be worth testing your dead drive in some flavor of Win x64.
Any tips on formatting? A guide perhaps? I assume I will need to download drivers from western digitals site?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/tips/advanced/ntfs.mspx Just make sure you are formatting your external drive and not your system drive.
If the drive is making windows freeze up it likely toast. This is a good indicator that the drive is failing. If that data is important you can try to find a drive that matches your existing one and swap out logic boards. Thats the green pcb board under the hard drive. check ebay. If the data isnt important then buy a new drive.
Before you format do a chkdsk x: /f on the drive. (x= the drive letter of the drive). "abnormal shutdowns" or the external was roughed up while it was writing can cause the drive to become corrupted "unreadable". A chkdsk can usually fix the problem. If chkdsk doesn't work you can try "testdisk" that can fix a drive that is heavily corrupted. I had a 400gb (350gb in use) drive that got corrupted when I tried to partition it. Testdisk got it fixed and didn't loose any of the 300+gb of data on it. As long as the try is spinning up and showing up under "my computer" you can almost always recover all the data. Worst case scenario the external case is bad, the drive is probably still good and can still be use as a spare drive or installed in a new external case. If you need to format, no need to use other software. You can format from "my computer", just right click and format. It's best to use NTFS it is more robust for data storage and is easier to fix when corrupted. But format is only for when everything else has failed. Chkdsk or testdisk has always worked for me.
