I dropped my 1TB Western Digital External Hard Drive on the floor, now it isn't being recognized in the My Computer folder. I can see the drive under Control Panel, but not under My Computer though. (I dropped it from a chair that was about 1 foot off the ground) The system powers on and when I eject the USB cable it makes the regular system sound of ejecting a USB port. I didn't have too much data on this system and had most of the info backed up on another external HD. I've only had this hard drive for about 2 months. Can I send it back to Western Digital for warranty work? Is there any way to recover data? Am I out of luck? Tips, suggestions, sympathies?
If you want to be unethical, just send it back to WD and hope they fix it for free. If it was working fine before and not working now, I don't think there's anything you could do software wise to fix it. If there is a really important document you need, you could take it to a pc repair place and they could fix it. I think they replace the platter or something to get broken HDDs working again. The HDD could've prematurely died on its own after you gave it a bump. They usually use the lower tier HDD for their external line up. My brother went through two WD externals before he found one that worked. Two of them were DOA and we just took it back to Best Buy for a replacement.
typically, WD will give you a new HD if there are no signs of tampering with the case. You will just have to accept that you will lose everything on there (which isn't a big deal to you since you have it backed up elsewhere as well). The other option is to open the case and put a new case on the actual drive and see if it works then. If it does, then you are in luck and only screwed up your old case. You can also take it to Geek Squad where they will charge you $200 to directly hook up the HD to their computers (basically the rip-off way of changing the case on your own) I think your best option is to make sure the HD is covered by warranty and then send it in. Even if you didnt have the stuff backed up, opening the case, and in turn, voiding the warranty, is taking a chance. When my HD broke, I opened it up because the stuff I was trying to save was more valuable to me than the cost of a new HD. It didn't work out, but I tried.
I'd try removing it off your devices from the computer management if it sees it and then try to see if it'll reconnect when you search for hardware.
Freezer trick works as a last option when the drive just fails on it's own. I don't think it will help with a drop.
You never know it might. With computers, the one rule is that they're are no rules . That being said, I've heard bat**** crazy things with hd's that you should only be prepared to do when you've completely severed ties to your drive. One guy dropped his on the floor from like 20 ft in the air and it suddenly worked for 6 months lol. Give the plug-in to another computer a try brightside and see if that doesn't work. When you say you can see the drive under Control Panel , are you talking about Administrative Tools or System?
Brightside, Don't listen to "vivi". You need to go with Seagate instead of Western Digital for starters. Also try to have a backup in place. I used to have a 100 gig EHD that was a Seagate Free Agent and the thing worked great (it had all of my music backed up on it and was my primary source for my iPOD) and like you, I inadvertently knocked it off and down to the floor. The drop was only like a foot but the damage had been done. When I plugged it back in, it wasn't recognized by the computer (which you can find by going to the "my computer" screen as you know). I noticed it was making a faint skipping noise and knew right then I was ****ed (hopefully DaDakota's kid isn't reading this thread). I let one of my work IT guys look at it and he had to take the cover off but it took forever because he had to get a special instrument to take the cover off. Once he finally got the cover off, he told me there was nothing he could do. I had read about the freezing thing on-line but that seems like something to do if you really have no other option and you are desperate. From what I gather, if it does work, you have so long to get the data off the EHD and to somewhere else. Have you been able to get the cover off and actually look inside of it? You may want to do that first and see if you have a friend who knows about architecture of hard drives (like an IT professional) before giving up and going to buy a new one. Luckily for me, there was a guy at work who had copied my entire hard drive to his and thus he became my back-up. So, I went to Amazon and bought a 500 gig EHD through Seagate and when it came, he put his hard drive on it. That saved me, who knows how many hours of time of putting the music back on there. And you better believe that I had him make another copy of what is on there (keeping the back-up current). I was able to get mine for under a 100 bucks. I hope it works out for you because believe me there is no worse feeling in the world than to know that important data is lost and there is not a damn thing you can do to get it back. Always backup your data if you can.
