External HDD finally gave up on life

[Guest]

My dear, sainted WD Passport finally died, but I need to perform a feat of necromancy to rip the data out from its lifeless corpse and dump it straight back to hell, where it belongs.

 

When I plug it in, it not only beeps, but clicks sinisterly - after which, it will fall into an ominous silent with apparently zero spinning. It's not appearing on My Computer, but it is detected by Device Manager and I can still Safely Remove Hardware, hah. On Disk Management, that's where the problem finally comes to light. It's not initializing, and cannot be initialized by GPT or MBR. For MBR, the error message is Fatal Device Hardware Error. This is the part where the doom music plays, because I guess that's pretty much it for my hard drive.

 

I've looked around the internet, tried a few data recovery software here and there, tinkered around a bit. But the fact is, I'm stumped.

 

Before I send for the pros, is there any way I can recover the data from this thing?

 

ಠ_ಠ

[dmanschramm]

*A moment of silence for a brother with a dead HDD*

 

*Sad Violin Music*

 

You probably won't be able to recover any data if the disk can't even spin.

Hopefully the guys over at WD can help you recover the data on it. Maybe you shouldn't try to keep spinning the drive, it might be ruining your data.

[Enderman]

Its dead.

This is why you do backups.

[vembutech]

It's seems like your HDD dead.

[Burusutazu]

Drop it on the floor from a short distance, my dad did this when I was 7 to fix my laptops HDD lol. (It was already broken so he tried it anyways, it worked.)

[Guest]

Don't worry, I do have a back up of my important stuff - I'm just gonna miss my movies and shit, that's all, but no biggie.

 

Coincidentally, there's an IT fair right now and I picked up a Transcend StoreJet 25H3, 1TB for USD65.00. It's shockproof and hopefully is going to survive my trip across Australia and New Zealand. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed with my WD Passport. I didn't drop it or anything, even this Hitachi external HDD that I picked up about a decade ago is still going strong, other than a slight insensitivity of the USB port. That was back when 100GB cost USD70.00, haha.

 

Still, thanks for the suggestions! That sad violin music made me burst into tears, will not recommend for repeat viewing.

[PINKmonster325]

I really should rethink my setup... I'm using a WD Passport to store all of my documents and music on. I'm not sure why but it seemed more reliable than my internet hard drive that gets wiped every week when i install a new os.

[Captain_WD]

My dear, sainted WD Passport finally died, but I need to perform a feat of necromancy to rip the data out from its lifeless corpse and dump it straight back to hell, where it belongs.

 

When I plug it in, it not only beeps, but clicks sinisterly - after which, it will fall into an ominous silent with apparently zero spinning. It's not appearing on My Computer, but it is detected by Device Manager and I can still Safely Remove Hardware, hah. On Disk Management, that's where the problem finally comes to light. It's not initializing, and cannot be initialized by GPT or MBR. For MBR, the error message is Fatal Device Hardware Error. This is the part where the doom music plays, because I guess that's pretty much it for my hard drive.

 

I've looked around the internet, tried a few data recovery software here and there, tinkered around a bit. But the fact is, I'm stumped.

 

Before I send for the pros, is there any way I can recover the data from this thing?

 

ಠ_ಠ

 

 

Hey HowlHMS,

 

I'm sorry to hear about your drive. It sounds that the drive is really gone and it should be replaced. 

What exact model is the drive? If it happens to have hardware encryption, I wouldn't advise you to remove it from the enclosure as it cannot be read outside of it. I would suggest that you turn to a Data Recovery company if you want your data back (this would be the safest way, but also the most costly one). http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=tOAOg3Trying other methods before sending the drive to data recovery company lowers the chance for them to retrieve the data. 

 

In case the drive is out of warranty and is not hardware encrypted, connecting it directly to the motherboard might help you. 

 

Captain_WD.