I have a WDP 250GB portable hard drive, that last week accidently fell to a tile floor when I was taking a file out of my cupboard. Since then whenever I plug it - it gives only 3 hissing sound and nothing. The System Manager detects it as a Mass Storage Device but shows with a zero byte, which I understand is Media error not board or circut error. I have all my memorable family pics and my kids childhood photos/movies and I am in state of shock for last one week. Please please guide me to get everything back - I am in Dubai and anyone knows some place to get HDD fix -please let me know - I am thankful to all in advance who will read and advice a solution.
The falling thing usually can do some damage to the hard drive in two ways: physical damage and logical damage.
The former one always is a nightmare to both of your inner data and physical drive.
However, the latter is fine since you still can run a free recovery program to regain your data and format it to see whether this drive could work normally. Honestly, this freeware has helped restoring many all of my important data from my inaccessible drive. You should try it:
Here is a trick that has worked for me with WD drives several times: put the drive in the freezer within a zip bag (to keep out the moisture) for about 15 minutes, then connect the drive (as it remains in the freezer) through a long USB cord to the computer, and it should be recognized. Once it’s recognized, I will take the drive out and copy all the files on it to another drive. Hope that this works for you too, at least to rescue your data.
Here is a trick that has worked for me with WD drives several times: put the drive in the freezer within a zip bag (to keep out the moisture) for about 15 minutes, then connect the drive (as it remains in the freezer) through a long USB cord to the computer, and it should be recognized. Once it’s recognized, I will take the drive out and copy all the files on it to another drive. Hope that this works for you too, at least to rescue your data.
DO NOT FREEZE YOUR DRIVE IF DATA IS IMPORTANT. This is a great way to kill the drive to a beyond repair point, not to recover it. Freezing the drive is a myth that has very little logic behind it, I remember 10 years ago or so it was working on some of the hard drives that had bearing issues, but those days are over.
my external hard drive could not be detected in my laptop. the light still lights up when i connect it via USB cable but nothing appears on the computer. I also tried connecting it to different computers and cable and it is still not recognized… I also check it on disk management and there is the hard drive
if the hard drive is showing up in disk management, and it has not been dropped, and it doesn’t click. Then you can try and extract data from it by installing software like R-studio.
NEVER TRY TO SAVE RECOVERED FILES/FOLDERS TO THE SAME LOGICAL DISK WHERE THEY RESIDE!!!
Or you may obtain unpredictable results and lose all of your data.
R-studio makes it very easy to recover data from a hard drive.
Hi, I’m from having problem with my WD Essentials, I accidentaly dropped it and after that, It detects sometimes in my PC but at anytime it’s not detected, also the transfer rate is very slow ranging from 80kb - 200kb per seconds. Also it takes so much time to detect in my PC, sorry for my bad english. I need my files in my external hard drive
dropped drives lead to head failures. If data is important get professional data recovery help. Avoid using DR software, as failed heads can very easily damage platter surface and make whole drive unrecoverable
My device was working fine until this morning. I plugged it in and it is not showing under my computer. When plugged in it spins like it should, lights up like it should, and makes the noise and the icon is displayed ready to be disconnected.
When i search in disk management it shows it as disk 1 and not initialized. when i try to initialize it tells me “the service could not be performed due to a device I/O error”.
I have tried to update firmware but unable to cause i am given “Firmware update failed on specific device. Plese click EXIT, then close all other open applications and then run the WD firmware updater again” I have no other applications open.
I did an update driver through the computer management and it is showing i have the most up to date drivers.
I have tried to assign a letter to the drive but when i right click on the drive it does not give me the option.
On other computers it does the same exact thing.The only thing i have no tried is to change the cord and i am hoping to find a replacement cord and try it out soon. If there is a solution based off the criteria i have given please let me know. The data was already backed up, i just want to hard drive to function again. Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
Oh before i forget i have a 1TB Passport P/N: WDBBEP0010BBK-01 runningn on a Dell with windows 7 on which i just conducted an update on (which are usually followed by problems)
Don’t initialize it. You can lose your data. Sometimes that I/O error means a bad cable. Try another cable first. Otherwise, it’s probable that you corrupted the file system on the drive.
