Please help!

I have a Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX that all the sudden just stopped being detected in windows and BIOS. I have tried everything and nothing works. Tried new cable and different port, tried running it on SATAII …nothing. Even tried it in a different computer and nothing. It was just a storage drive, running a SSD as boot drive.

I can get it to show in Disk Management but shows as a ATA device and says its not Intiliazed. You cant get it to do anything. 

Im at my wits end, this drive has 15 years of pics of my work on it plus all my music and movies! 

Can anyone help? Please! I need to atleast get my data off this drive!

A decent data recovery software will do the trick

Try to act quick since the drive still shows on disk management

I used TestDisk but there are many options online 

Take it to a professional as Do It Yourself data recoveries never end well and have a very high potential of costing you more.

Going forward, I would highly recommend 2-3 external hard drives - one of them at a bank or something locked up - and an online service to backup your data to prevent this panic.  

I personally learned the hard way and I am missing a good 2k pictures that are not recoverable due to scratches on the platter.  

The drive still spins but if you try intilializing it in ADMIN tools it says I/O Error. I thought there were some guys on here that knew if swapping the PCB would fix it or i could send it to someone to get fixed? 

How much is data recovery? They gonna say anything about my **bleep** collection? lol

An I/O error is never good.  I have personally extracted data off of drives that have had that but, I have never attempted anything that the BIOS wouldn’t recognize.  As for the cost, I do not know as different data recovery facilities charge different amounts for the service.

I know that Ontrack would cost you $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$  just because of the name, but they are good.

As for your collection, they won’t.  If anything, they will say either they got it, got part of it, or they couldn’t get it.  As far as what it there, they may go through some of the images and videos to make sure nothing is corrupted.

does the drive make any sounds during spinning? pm sent