Why has my Western Digital hard drive stopped working?

Question

Hi,
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I have a western digital 2 TB elements hard drive, it was working fine until a few days ago, now, my PC or Laptop will not recognise it.
If I switch it on the PC or Laptop does not see it and if I go to my computer the screen goes white.
If I switch it off, my computer shows as it is expected.
I have tried control panel then disk management. If it is switched on, it does not see it, If I switch it off then Disk management shows all disks and flash drives, if I then switch the WD on, it shows it but I can not access it? I clicked on troubleshoot, that doesn't do anything?
As you may tell, I am not very PC literate and unsure why this has suddenly stopped working but any hints or tips would be most appreciated, this has 6 years worth of family photos on & I will be in BIG trouble as not all of them are backed up twice!
Thanks again for your time and fingers crossed someone out there can help me?
All the best,
Rich

Answer 1

Hello Richard,



Some things to try first:



Does it have power? Is the power lead working - check the lights on the drive come on. If not then you have a faulty power lead / the transformer inside the drive unit is broken.



It seems like you have tried a stand alone PC and a laptop but was it using the same USB cable? If so then find another one just to eliminate that the cable isn't at fault. Also try different USB ports in both the laptop and PC.



If you get no joy with that then download and install the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows from Western Digital's website:



http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=304&sid=3&lang=en



Try the quick test and see if the diagnostics can display the drive information including the SMART status. If it can communicate with the drive and displays this information then it is likely the hard drive within the unit that has problems in which case try running the extended test. This will report back any bad sectors within the drive.



However, if the diagnostics cannot communicate with the drive then this would most likely indicate that the drive is either not powering up properly or there is a fault with the controller part of drive. In which case try switching it on and listen to it. Can you hear it powering up? It will also vibrate slightly. If you can't hear that then the drive isn't powering up properly in which case it will need to be removed from the unit and placed into another working unit. You can buy spare hard disk enclosure units which will come with power supplies. It will mean that you will have to open it though - if you're not sure how to do this then most computer shops will be able to help:



http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=external+hard+drive+enclosure+case&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aexternal+hard+drive+enclosure+case



If you can hear the drive starting up / vibrates on power up then this would indicate that the power supply to the unit is fine but the controller part isn't functioning correctly. Again, the only way to fix this is to remove the drive from the unit enclosure and transplant it into another enclosure case.



If all this fails then you will have to send the drive away for recovery. There is more information on Western Digital's website here:



http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp



I wish you the best of luck,



Alan

Answer 2

I'm assuming this is an external hard drive?



It's a common problem and there is no fix.



Backups to a USB connected external hard drive work fine and then one day the drive is no longer recognised. It seems they get corrupted because they are getting disconnected before data has finished writing to them. All you can do is format the disk in order to use it again. Obviously it is only a matter of time before the problem re-occurs.



Personally, I got a network drive that connects to my router using an ethernet cable instead because I got fed up with the unreliability of USB drives. I've never had a problem with a network drive. The only disadvantage is that the data transfer speeds are slower compared to USB but data integrity and reliability are more important in my opinion.

Answer 3

I don't think you have enough RAM, an immediate upgrade should illeviate your problem