WD 4TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive starting to go bad

[Northern Nevada]

So my external hard drive started malfunctioning two days ago by suddenly dropping out of the window marked "Computer" then the icon returned but I wasn't able to delete any files off of it.

I am now trying to copy all the files off but the window marked computer keeps crashing so that all I can see is my C: drive. After a few minutes the other drives come back. Is the malfunctioning drive causing this crash?

N N

 

[johnb35]

Most likely yes. FYI, External drives are more likely to fail then internal drives. Always keep important things on multiple media in case disaster strikes.

You can try putting the external on a different pc, Some are not as picky as others causing issues.

 

[Okedokey]

Those My Book WD enclosures use a linux boot partition (EXT3) and are usually not easy to get to directly via windows.

I would recommend persisting with your intermittent recovery but use WD tools https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12452