Hi all! I went yesterday to a friend to give them some data from my WD. They have a mac and i have a windows, but in the past, they could take stuff off it, just not add media on the external hard drive. Yesterday, the mac did not detect it at all. I plugged it back into my windows laptop, and it was detected just fine. However, with everything closed, it kept saying that something is using my drive and it cannot be ejected safely. So i shut off my laptop, unplugged the hard drive and went home. I transported it in the usual form, in my back-pack. However, when I got home and plugged it in, it started clicking 6 times, then stopping. The LED would stay lit, my laptop sees that it is plugged it, but it does not see the data *it says disk space is 0GB and i cannot initialize it). I have all my university lectures for this semester on this drive. What are the chances of a hardware fix to NOT delete them? I do not have money at all for any sort of data recovery.
this is the clicking sound
You should always keep at least 1 backup of important data … 2 backups to be really safe.
It doesn’t require a University Degree to figure that one out.
wow! thank you for being useful… not. I am not sure whether you read it or not, but I am a student. Getting one hard drive so as to not kill my laptop’s memory was expensive enough. Getting 2 or 3? yeah sure if someone else was to give me the money for it. I need only short time storage-a semester’s time. What’s that, 6 months max? And this driver failed in 2 months or 3. Was not saving any important pictures on like my baby pictures, or parents’ wedding, just my lectures for this semester. Some, I kept on my laptop. However older ones, I did not. Forgive me for not expecting it would die in less than a semester and throwing money left and right to get even more “back-ups” that can have the exact same fate.
Next time, unless you have actual useful information to give, refrain from posting 
freedom of expression does not include being sarcastic towards someone who has a real issue and not even giving anything.
P.S ever read the community guidelines? if not, let me tell you 2 things that they ask before commenting: 1) Does your reply improve the conversation? (which obviously, yours does not)
2) Criticize IDEAS, not PEOPLE
cheers to a better community.
A hardware fix could help, but if money is tight, you might not have too many DIY options that won’t risk further damage. You could try using free recovery software like Recuva or TestDisk, but be cautious. If the drive is failing mechanically, running it could make the problem worse.
