[cubyong]

My external hard drive that I have does not read after I plugged it in even though it makes the usual reading sound when u plug it in. My laptop detects a USB mass storage device BUT, the files cannot be read. After 5 minutes, the autoplay screen pops up and i do not see any words indicating that the files are being read.he driver shows up as H: drive but when i clicked on it, the whole window freezes and i have to wait for another 5 minutes before the window returns to normal. I downloaded the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic and when I ran the programme, a box appeared indicating that the drivers are being read but immediately disappears. Only when I switched off the hard drive, the DLGDIAG pops up and it showed the SMART status of my hard drive as "FAIL". When I switched on my hard drive again, the same thing happens and this time, I clicked on SMART view info for my hard drive and it shows that the only error was the Spin Up Time. When I tried to run further diagnostics on my hard drive, an error would show up saying that there are too many bad sectors.

So how am I suppose to fix this problem? I have got important documents and personal documents in my external hard drive and I do not wish to lose it! Please help!

[serverguy]

Hello

• Is it possible to test this drive on another PC anywhere?

• If it is. then the first thing that I would recommend doing would be too copy everything off the drive and save it elsewhere. This way, if anything happens to the drive your data will be safe.

• If you find that the drive works fine on another computer, then there is a problem with your computer.

• If it still won't work then the drive is probably at fault.

If you get back with this information then I can help your further.

I think that it may be a problem with the disk itself because of the error tool saying that there are lots of bad sectors. But this may just be a false alert.

If the drive is still not working on another computer and you really want to get the documents back then I would suggest taking it to a data recovery firm from the beginning.

[cubyong]

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I just tried connecting my hard disk to my friend's laptop and it has the same problem. It recognises it as an external hard disk but i cannot access it.

Is there any programme or way I can recover the data by myself? So how does this data recovery thing go about? How much do you think I would need to spend on data recovery? By the way, the size of my hard disk is 250gb.

[serverguy]

Sorry to hear that you still have the same problem when plugged in to another computer. That means the drive is the problem.

First thing I would ask is have you got any sort of warranty left on the drive? It may be worth contacting the manufacturer to find out what they can do. They may be able to fix it.

If that is not an option then you could try a couple of things.

If you have a desktop PC then you could take the external hard drive apart and take the hard drive out of it. It will be just like a normal hard drive inside that plugs in either by IDE or SATA. You could connect it to a desktop and see if you could access it from there. If it still had the access errors then you could use a program that will do its best to copy it to another hard drive.

But there is no guarantee that this would work and it would be a lot of fiddling around.

If you really want the data back and are not that computer knowledgeable I would take it to a data recovery place. I think that PC world do this and they charge about a £100 to do it. Pretty steep but you will have your data back.

If you have a desktop and another drive to put all your stuff on then I could help you to use a utility that will copy all the good stuff of the disk to another one.

Note: I think that your drive may be giving you signs that it is dying. I would tread carefully with it in case it completely goes and then you will be in worse trouble.

Note 2: Some one else may chime in with some ideas and show us that all your data is safe. It may be worth waiting a while to see what they have to say.

[cubyong]

yea, i kind of like the idea of taking it apart but i'm afraid that after i do that and what if it still does not work? well i'll try to take it apart and see how it goes i suppose... anyways thanks for ur help serverguy!

[Philee]

Hello cubyong!

I have a similar problem with my WD My Book Essential.
It takes a time until the WD diagnostics tool recognizes the HD.
SMART results are all good, also the qick test. The extended test shows too many bad sectors.

Did you have any success?
I still have warranty, but the HD is almost full with important and sensitiv data.

Thanks and kind regards

[serverguy]

Originally Posted by Philee Hello cubyong! I have a similar problem with my WD My Book Essential. It takes a time until the WD diagnostics tool recognizes the HD. SMART results are all good, also the qick test. The extended test shows too many bad sectors. Did you have any success? I still have warranty, but the HD is almost full with important and sensitiv data. Thanks and kind regards

I doubt cubyong will reply since he hasn't been online since he posted that last post.

If the data is important to you then I suggest you take it to a professional repair place. They will almost certainly be able to get the data back.

If not, then you can try what I said in my last post. But if the drive is still under warranty you could probably claim the warranty costs or something similar anyway.