Secondary HDD not working/detected (formerly external HDD)

[Booster]

Hi,



I have used a WD Elements 2 TB external HDD for all my backups and it's no longer working when I connect it via USB. I can see the physical drive, but there is no information and when I click on it it hangs indefinitely. I've read about that issue extensively, it being very common (well, more accurately the constant blue flashing light) so I finally decided to take the physical HDD out of the external frame and connect it internally via SATA cables. Now, I realize that the drive may be gone but I have a lot of important photos there that I would hate to lose so I want to try everything to recover this.



My current computer has a SSD 128GB (Windows OS installed here), and a 1 TB standard HD. When I connected this one I received an "A2" error from from MSI motherboard (related to not being able to detect a drive) but was able to move past to Windows Boot up. During the "Windows Starting" screen it now hangs indefinitely as long as the WD HDD is plugged in. Here is what I tried:



1. Unplug WD from sata, let windows load up, then plug it back in. In this case nothing happened - not showing up in device manager even when forcing a scan for hardware changes.

2. I've tried using a different SATA port - same issue

3. Restarting the computer and going into BIOS I can see it is detected in one of the SATA ports.



Can anyone suggest something that can hopefully lead me to know 100% whether the drive is dead or I can recover the photos?



Thanks

 

[johnb35]

If you can't get windows to recognize the drive to where you can access it, you may be out of luck. You can try loading a live linux cd and see if you can pull the data off that way but I doubt it.

Or you can try booting to Hirens boot cd and run the western digital diagnostic and see if it can repair the drive but again, doubtful.

 

[Robert P]

Possibly finding an identical drive that's healthy and swapping the board from it? I've never tried this I've just read about it. Apparently the mechanicals of the drive itself can be good but the board can go bad.

And of course the moral of the story is backup really important stuff to an optical disc.

 

[Okedokey]

Try enabling Hot Swap in the BIOS for that drive and then plug it in after OS is booted after making sure you have the latest chipset, SATA and BIOS installed.