My external Western Digital Elements suffered a drop to the ground and refused to appear in Windows anymore, although the drive was making normal sounds and the light on the back was flashing. I assumed it was the enclosure that was damaged, so I opened up the enclosure, took the drive out and put it into my PC in hope of using it as an internal drive.
Problem is, it does not automatically appear in Windows, but when I go to the device manager and scan for newly added plug & play devices, it does find it as “WDC WD20 EARS-00MVWB0 SCSI Disk Device”, but Windows (Vista) asks for drivers. I can’t find any, can someone please help me out?? This drive contains over a year’s worth of precious video editing footage that is irreplacable.
Please any suggestions how I can make this drive work will be greatly appriciated!
But isn’t there anything I can do to make sure it’s really dead? The information on this drive is very important, so many hours of work lies behind the files on it.
What exactly does professional data recovery involve? Do they use special software to rescue the data, or is it a special device that actually pulls readable data off the undamaged parts of the discs inside the drive?
If professional data recovery is my only chance, what (approximately) at the very least should I expect it to cost?
Also, do you have any companies you could suggest?
If there are any softwares at all that I might be able to use to recover the data myself, could you please suggest some? (including softwares that aren’t free).
You could try downloading the drivers from WD. If you have a copy of the disk content when you bought the drive, the drivers might also be on there. Third choice - look on the internet for drivers required.
