My Western Digital external HD no longer shows up in My Computer and all the files/programs on it are now inaccessible. The device manager shows that it's there, and working properly, but I can't get to it. What should I do? I can't lose the data on the HD!
There is a small circuit board in the enclosure that makes the power needed by the drive and it may have stopped working properly. You would need to remove the drive itself from the enclosure and connect it directly to the computer to verify its operation. If the drive is still good you'll be able to back your data up while ***'s connected to your computer.
If the drive itself is at fault and Windows still can't access data, you have a problem. If the drive is mechanically bad and doesn't spin, the only way to recover data is to physically remove the recording platters from the drive, place them in another unit and try reading. This requires a clean-room environment and is quite an expensive service, but there are companies that offer data recovery. If the drive spins you can try using data recovery tools such as EasyRecovery to get the data back or you can try a recovery company.
Good luck!
Posted on May 31, 2009
In Disk Management, find your WD disk in the list ain the bottom portion of the center ccolumn of the screen. If it still says Disk #, right click on it and select Reactivate Disk from the context menu. This should bring the disk back online. If it says Missing and the disk was configured as a Dynamic Disk, you can also use the Reactivate Disk method. Otherwise, you will need to delete all associated volumes and recreate the disk from scratch (losing all data on the disk).
Posted on May 31, 2009
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Posted on Jan 02, 2017
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