Aging WD Blue not behaving in a USB adapter

My wife got a new laptop and I’m trying to rescue some data that was missed in the backukp. The laptop and disk has been working fine until it stopped booting. Pulling the drive out and connecting it through a USB adapter the disk spins up and File Eplorer opens for a few moments – maybe three minutes – before File Explorer stops responding and then closes. Watching the Device Manager I see a USB Mass Storage device apper and then disappeara. On at least one occasion I was able to get into what wa sthe C: drive and can see the User folder, but it quickly disappeared again. I also downloaded the WD Dashboard, but it never appears.

Is the drive toast? Or might there be another recoverey option?

Thanks!

Hi @cwk,

Please refer to the following articles for accessing the Disk Management in Windows and Disk Utility on various Operating Systems:

Title: How to access Disk Management in Windows

Title: How to access Disk Utility on macOS

Please refer to the following article for further troubleshooting steps:
Title: Windows or macOS Cannot Find My Drive

Please refer to the link below to test the drive using Drive Utilities:

Title: Setting up and downloading WD Drive Utilities:
https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13880