Hard drive not working - please help! Desperate!

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

Hi all, I am NOT tech savy at all and I am wondering why my WD external hard drive is not working when it was fine the last time I used it! It is fairly old MDL - WD3200P032

Normally when I turn it on via power lead and connect to my computer via usb cable, the blue circle light on the front would glow. Now, it is only flashing a dull light. I have tried another power source only to have the same dull light flashing - please help!!

2

Well, there could be various reasons for a hard drive to become unresponsive or undetected. It can be a hardware issue or some technical glitch in the software.

Below are the few possible reasons for any drive being unresponsive:

  • Lot of bad sectors
  • Infected File (Virus or Malware)
  • Driver issue
  • Mechanical failure

You can try the below options to resolve the issue:

  • Run CHKDSK
  • Use an Antivirus & Anti-Malware tool
  • Re-install the drivers

Hope this will help.

3

Hi,

The reason behind this can be the outdated driver software of the drive. Please follow the below steps to update the drives driver’s software and check if the drive starts working normally.

  • Open device manager, now the Device Manager window will appear under which you will find the list of devices.
  • Select the disk drivers and do right click on the external drive which you want to fix.
  • Now select the updated driver

Once the driver software update, your device will start working again.

4

As a last resort, remove the hard drive from the enclosure and connect it to the PC using a hard drive to usb adapter, see if you can see your files in explorer now.

5

I have the similar issue with my WD15000H1NC-00, My Book World Edition.
I tried what you proposed , but still unable to access the file.

Any other idea would be appreciated

Jack

6

I have the same issue and non of these options have worked.

7

If none of the above work then the hard drive has failed.You would need to pay for professional data recovery service if the data is important.