LED Blinks 3 times then stays steady, not recognized by either Mac or PC

I have had the 500GB external hard drive Mypassport for about four years and it has worked fine until today. When I connected it to my Mac, the LED light blinked three times then stayed steady, and it was not showing up on the desktop or under devices in finder. I googled about it and clicked a box in the finder preferemce to make sure external hard drives are shown, but still it was not showing up. So I tried to connect it to a PC, and the result was the same, not showing up in computer, and not showing up under disk management. The handbook says if the LED light flashes about 3 times per second, it is active, and if the light stays steady, it is idle. I don’t know if this means that my drive is idle, which is not because I have put a lot of pictures and videos in it, and even it is idle, it should be showing up. So there must be something wrong with it… Has anyone encountered this problem before?

Welcome to the Community.

If the hard drive is seen on Device Manager but not Disk Management then it is possible for the storage volume to be missing. I would recommend confirming if the hard drive allows for a diagnostic test to be be carried by means of Data Lifeguard Diagnostics on Windows.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/940/

Regards,

Hi,

It is not showing up in both device and disk management