Drive Inaccessible

BA1385 · 7 Mar 2019 at 15:08

Hi there,

I have a 4TB (almost full) external HD (Western Digital), which has become faulty.

After connecting, the light turns on and it starts spinning. The drive name is then visible in My Computer.

However, when clicking on the drive to open it, I receive the message that it is inaccessible and am asked whether I want to scan it.

I am wondering - if I run the scan, what are the chances of this fixing the drive to the extent that I can at least access it to transfer the files from it? I understand that running things like CHKDSK can destroy drives but am not sure of the likelihood of this.

The drive is itself a backup of other drives; I should have most of the files elsewhere but am not certain.

I am not in a good situation financially at the moment so am tempted to try a DIY fix. I'm just wondering what the prognosis is for this kind of failure in terms of regaining access to it via DIY scanning and recovery software?

Thanks!

mattyfez · 7 Mar 2019 at 22:13

Have you tried other USB ports?
Are you able to plug the drive directly into the board via SATA to rule out a USB issue?

BA1385 · 8 Mar 2019 at 16:34

mattyfez said:
Have you tried other USB ports?
Are you able to plug the drive directly into the board via SATA to rule out a USB issue?

Hi,

Yeah, I've tried other ports and different machines without avail unfortunately.

It's an external, cased drive (please find image here: https://static.bhphoto.com/images/i...ments_portable_4000_1520539576000_1373583.jpg) so I'm not sure if it's actually possible to attempt the latter.

Thanks!

APM · 8 Mar 2019 at 18:56

Do you have access to a Linux machine to try it on?
Have another drive ready to transfer the files you need to as well.

Vexr · 8 Mar 2019 at 19:45

Is there a clicking sound? The freezer trick has worked for me on a couple of drives (1 internal, 1 external), which at least lasted long enough to pull the data off them.

BA1385 · 9 Mar 2019 at 15:55

Vexr said:
Is there a clicking sound? The freezer trick has worked for me on a couple of drives (1 internal, 1 external), which at least lasted long enough to pull the data off them.

As it was starting to fail, while still usable, there was a clicking sound briefly. Before this, the drive kept disconnecting/connecting itself abruptly. It was connected to the PC through a 4-port USB hub.

I do not have a machine with Linux unfortunately.

Thanks!