WD external hard drive issues

Hi everyone!

I am really hoping you all can help me out because I am honestly at my wits' end here... 😢 So, here is the situation: I have this 500 GB WD external hard drive that is packed with all sorts of private data, and I absolutely need to rescue it without having to format anything. It’s quite a headache. Basically, the drive has stopped working properly; I mean, it still spins up and Windows recognizes that something is plugged in, but I can't actually do a single thing with it. To be more specific: when I plug it into my PC, it starts up, but it takes at least a full minute before the icon even shows up in the bottom right corner of my taskbar.

Inside Windows, I can see it appearing right here:



And also over here:



But it isn't showing up anywhere else on the computer. For instance, it's missing from here:



Or even here:



The only option the system is giving me is this:



However, when I go ahead and click "Initialize Disk," I get this prompt:



And then, once I select either of those two options, this error pops up:



So, I am completely stuck. My BIOS sees it as a standard WD drive and nothing else. As for the Device Manager, there aren't any yellow exclamation marks to worry about, as you can see in image 2, which means all my drivers seem to be perfectly fine and in their place.

I’m splitting this post into two parts because the forum won't let me upload more than nine images at once! :P... Anyway, I have been googling everything under the sun—honestly, I am still googling right now—trying desperately to salvage whatever I can from this mess. So far, I’ve tried using Acronis True Image and Disk Management, but neither of them helped at all. I even gave EaseUS Partition Master a shot, but that's just as useless; it only detects a single drive, which is just my internal one where Windows is installed...



But why on earth won't it show up right here, inside the Partition Recovery Wizard...



And once I select that offered WD drive and click Next, this pops up:



Now I’ve reached the stage where I should be selecting files to move forward, but unfortunately, there simply aren't any files to choose from... It’s just a total dead end. EaseUS Partition Master isn't making any headway at all. Even EasyBCD won't recognize anything! On the other hand, HDD Regenerator actually did detect it, but the moment I clicked to start the repair process, it immediately flagged that the Master Boot Record is missing. Then, it just displayed "Wait please" and my entire computer completely froze up on me... I had no choice but to perform a hard restart because nothing was responding. At this point, I am honestly at a loss as to what else to try or which direction to take. I did happen to google some solutions, and it suggested that performing a BIOS update might be a good idea since my current BIOS is quite outdated. There are three new updates listed on the Asus website, but all three are still in beta... Since I'm currently running the last stable version for my motherboard, I'm really hesitant to touch them; I'm terrified those beta versions might cause more harm than good. Plus, truth be told, I have never attempted a BIOS update before, so the thought of something going wrong during the process is quite daunting...

I’m starting to suspect that the Master Boot might have gone missing, or—heaven forbid—the entire drive itself has finally given up the ghost... though I’m still holding onto a tiny shred of hope that there might be some way to save it! 🙂 Does anyone here have experience with this kind of issue, or maybe someone has run into something similar recently? I would truly appreciate any insight or guidance you could offer. Any suggestion at all is more than welcome... Thanks so much!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention one more thing! I actually have another external WD drive at home—it's a 2 TB model—and it works perfectly fine whenever I plug it into my computer. I’ve tried using the cable from that first drive, and then I tried its own original cable too... but it works just fine either way. On the other hand, this 500 GB one won't respond to any of them. It's exactly like what I described before; no matter which cable I plug into it, nothing happens. So, I'm pretty convinced it isn't a cable issue...

The images are way too huge. Scale them down next time... 😬

Look, speaking generally, if this data is critical and you want it back no matter what—you’ve been poking around the drive too much. Stop touching it. Just leave it turned off. Take it to professionals who do this for a living and actually have the specialized gear to rescue data that hasn't been further damaged by whatever software you've been running on it...

Prices aren't astronomical like they were a few years ago, and most places offer free diagnostics, so at least they can tell you if anything is salvageable and what the damage will do to your wallet:

http://www.infolab.com/pricing/

That’s what I would do, and it’s what I advise anyone who actually cares about the data on a medium like that.

Since you didn't provide exact drive models, I don't know if they're USB 2.0 or USB 3.0, so I'll just say that these issues where a USB drive isn't fully recognized are super common with certain motherboards that don't natively support USB 3.0. The controller tries to find something, fails, and just hangs. I've seen plenty of drives act like they're working when they're actually doing absolutely nothing... Other possible culprits are the cable—which might be USB 2.0 instead of USB 3.0—or the port itself. Front panel ports (on the case) often don't get enough power through the motherboard headers, so you really should be using the ports directly on the backplate.

If it's none of those things, then I think you've pretty much exhausted your options...

Jamie Ramos3 said:I’m splitting this post into two parts because the forum won't let me upload more than nine images at once! :P... Anyway, I have been googling everything under the sun—honestly, I am still googling right now—trying desperately to salvage whatever I can from this mess. So far, I’ve tried using Acronis True Image and Disk Management, but neither of them helped at all. I even gave EaseUS Partition Master a shot, but that's just as useless; it only detects a single drive, which is just my internal one where Windows is installed...



But why on earth won't it show up right here, inside the Partition Recovery Wizard...



And once I select that offered WD drive and click Next, this pops up:



Now I’ve reached the stage where I should be selecting files to move forward, but unfortunately, there simply aren't any files to choose from... It’s just a total dead end. EaseUS Partition Master isn't making any headway at all. Even EasyBCD won't recognize anything! On the other hand, HDD Regenerator actually did detect it, but the moment I clicked to start the repair process, it immediately flagged that the Master Boot Record is missing. Then, it just displayed "Wait please" and my entire computer completely froze up on me... I had no choice but to perform a hard restart because nothing was responding. At this point, I am honestly at a loss as to what else to try or which direction to take. I did happen to google some solutions, and it suggested that performing a BIOS update might be a good idea since my current BIOS is quite outdated. There are three new updates listed on the Asus website, but all three are still in beta... Since I'm currently running the last stable version for my motherboard, I'm really hesitant to touch them; I'm terrified those beta versions might cause more harm than good. Plus, truth be told, I have never attempted a BIOS update before, so the thought of something going wrong during the process is quite daunting...

I’m starting to suspect that the Master Boot might have gone missing, or—heaven forbid—the entire drive itself has finally given up the ghost... though I’m still holding onto a tiny shred of hope that there might be some way to save it! 🙂 Does anyone here have experience with this kind of issue, or maybe someone has run into something similar recently? I would truly appreciate any insight or guidance you could offer. Any suggestion at all is more than welcome... Thanks so much!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention one more thing! I actually have another external WD drive at home—it's a 2 TB model—and it works perfectly fine whenever I plug it into my computer. I’ve tried using the cable from that first drive, and then I tried its own original cable too... but it works just fine either way. On the other hand, this 500 GB one won't respond to any of them. It's exactly like what I described before; no matter which cable I plug into it, nothing happens. So, I'm pretty convinced it isn't a cable issue...

Sounds like an MBR issue. You should probably google how to fix the MBR without nuking your data—there are likely plenty of tutorials out there, maybe even some on YouTube. Or, you could follow darkowl72's lead and just take the drive to a pro for diagnostics if those files are mission-critical.

The drive itself is USB 2.0, and since I'm working with an older motherboard that doesn't even have a USB 3.0 port, there's just no way that could be the bottleneck here... plus, like I mentioned before, I really don't think the cables are the issue. Regardless, thanks for sending over that price list! If all my other troubleshooting attempts fall through, I think I might reach out to Infolab to see if we can work something out.

Maybe try pulling the drive out of the enclosure first to see if that does the trick, though I should probably mention that if you've got encryption turned on, it might be a bit pointless to bother unplugging it right now

First off, you should probably try plugging that drive into every single USB port you've got available... honestly, it might just be that one specific port is acting up or totally dead. Second, please, for the love of god, don't go trying to rescue your data with all those random, sketchy free apps you find online. Seriously, if one of those half-baked programs messes things up halfway through, even ten other apps won't be able to fix the damage they caused. Third, there’s actually a professional data recovery firm out in Chicago that specializes in exactly this kind of thing. I mean, if it's just a simple electronics issue, they can handle it, but if the hardware itself is fried... well, sometimes people talk about dunking the drive in some kind of specialized liquid to get a tiny window of time to read the data before it's gone forever and tossed in the trash. But hey, if it's already shot, it's probably a lost cause anyway. The company is called Infolab...