Fatal Device Hardware Error

The drive letter for my external drive wasn’t appearing in my file explorer. Disk Management said it wasn’t initialized. When initialing the error “Request Failed Due To A Fatal Device Hardware Error” appeared. Can I recover my data? I’m definitely not a techie so please make your reply as simple as possible. Thank you!!!

Hello,

Please refer to the following KBA article: Cannot Find My WD Drive on Windows or macOS

When “the request failed due to fatal device hardware error” occurs, your device turns inaccessible. This error usually occurs while attempting to transfer/copy files and suddenly the Windows OS fails to recognize the input or the output devices. In addition, this error could also be due to a fault in the systems hardware, inappropriate configuration, loose connections, etc.

To fix the error you can try the below DIY methods:

  1. Check the SMART status

  2. Run an error check

  3. Run CHKDSK scan

  4. Initialize the disk

Further, you can check the below blog to know more troubleshooting methods that can help to resolve the issue and also helps to recover data from such drive:

Hope it helps!