I have a WD My Book Essential 1.5 TB External Hard Drive on which I have saved all my important files, projects and photos/videos that I cannot afford to lose. My harddrive was working fine last night. Over the past few days, I have been trying to copy a folder (55GB size) that was on my the hard drive to my computer desktop. It was very slow (which is expected) and frequently crashing windows explorer, so I’ve also purchased a new computer to try to get this done but it was still frequently crashing. This would also happen when attempted on other computers. However, today, the hard drive would not open at all. It would be detected under “Device Manager” but it would not show up under “My Computer”. After trying to access this on multiple computers, it finally showed up on “My Computer” and I was finally able to open the the Hard Drive folder on one of my recently reformatted Toshiba laptops. It would open and display the contents (ie. file names and folders) but that’s all I would get. It would have a loading icon displayed and I would not be able to open any folders or files, nor can I right-click on any of them. After it finishes loading, the window would immediately close and the hard drive would not be detected again, it would also disappear rom “My Computer”. This is the pattern that has been happening.
Do I need a driver update? OR Is the actual Hard Drive itself malfunctioning?
I did notice that although the light on the hard drive is on and flickering at times, I have not noticed any “spinning” from the device or loud start sounds… could that be it?
Note: I’m pretty sure it’s not the “click of death”. At least I hope not.
I would appreciate any instructions or directions that I may be given.
Thanks.
