External HD not recognized

HELP: My External HD quit being recognized by my laptop. It shows up in ‘Device Manager’ but doesn’t show under my ‘Computer’. Is there any truly free software or way I can recover the drive so I can attempt to salvage what’s on it? It’s a Western Digital and it plugs into a USB port. It’s no longer under warranty.  I’m using my Win7 laptop as my Win8 laptop isn’t loading properly. It’s not showing up on either one. It will show up in device manager on either laptop just not as a letter drive under my computer. The product was purchased in October 2012 so it’s not even two years old. I have a lot of stuff on the drive that would be too expensive to replace.

Thanks for any help.

 

 

Hello,

 It may be possible to still extract the data utilizing data recovery software. Western Digital does not provide data recovery software. However, there are several kinds of Data Recovery software available. If you do a  web search for  Data Recovery  it will yield plenty of data recovery software options.

Before trying data recovery you should try some basic troubleshooting, like using another USB cable and another computer if possible.

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Thanks. I will try your suggestions:smiley: