How to recover data from an external hard drive
in IT Support ·
My external drive just bit the dust (it's a 2 TB WD My Passport Ultra with hardware encryption), probably because I dropped the damn thing on the floor... 🤦
So, when I plug it into my computer, the light comes on and the thing spins up, but Windows 8.1 won't detect it at all. It’s totally MIA—it doesn't show up in This PC and even Disk Management can't find a trace of it. The only sign of life is in Device Manager under Disk Drives, where it shows up as a WD My Passport USB Device.
The weird part is, back when it was actually working, whenever I plugged it in, the unlock software would pop up first in This PC—you know, the one where you have to enter the password or it just pulls the saved credentials for that Windows user—and only then would the actual drive volume finally appear in This PC.
I was thinking about maybe grabbing a new USB-micro cable first to see if that fixes it. But besides that, does anyone have any other ideas on what I could try?... 😁
So, when I plug it into my computer, the light comes on and the thing spins up, but Windows 8.1 won't detect it at all. It’s totally MIA—it doesn't show up in This PC and even Disk Management can't find a trace of it. The only sign of life is in Device Manager under Disk Drives, where it shows up as a WD My Passport USB Device.
The weird part is, back when it was actually working, whenever I plugged it in, the unlock software would pop up first in This PC—you know, the one where you have to enter the password or it just pulls the saved credentials for that Windows user—and only then would the actual drive volume finally appear in This PC.
I was thinking about maybe grabbing a new USB-micro cable first to see if that fixes it. But besides that, does anyone have any other ideas on what I could try?... 😁