External hard drive

kayevajo

External hard drive won't show up on pc.
Powers on and light comes on. It's making a whirring sound.

Is material on this retrievable ya reckon ?

Thanks!

kayevajo

It's a WD external hard drive

It doesn't show up when I plug it into a USB port

sugarman wrote: »

Possibly.

Does it show up in the bios?

What make/model is it? If it's a standard sata drive you could try remove it from the caddy and plug it directly into a pc. The controller could be faulty, rather than the hdd itself.

If it is the harddrive that's faulty, the data could probably be recovered by a specialist but you're talking about a few hundred.

tedpan

kayevajo wrote:

It doesn't show up when I plug it into a USB port

What about in device manager under disk management?

smacl

kayevajo wrote: »

It's a WD external hard drive

It doesn't show up when I plug it into a USB port

Have you tried an different port? I've had a few PCs where the front panel USB has died but the MOBO ones on the back are fine. Also try a different cable, could also be that.

kayevajo

[Not showing up there 🥺quote="tedpan;111611126"]What about in device manager under disk management?[/quote]

PostWoke

Any brown outs or anything lately OP?

+1 for shucking it and hooking it up directly in your PC to check.

tedpan

kayevajo wrote:

[Not showing up there 🥺quote="tedpan;111611126"]What about in device manager under disk management?

[/quote]

Hmmm, it could be the enclosure. I'd try removing the drive from the enclosure and buying a new one or a USB to sata cable. Is it a portable or desktop external drive?

z0oT

sugarman wrote: »

What make/model is it? If it's a standard sata drive you could try remove it from the caddy and plug it directly into a pc. The controller could be faulty, rather than the hdd itself.

Personally I've lost count of the amount of times the problem has been in the enclosure for external drives not being read properly, but the drive itself was fine.

I'd start there.

PostWoke

SHUCK SHUCK SHUCK SHUCK

kayevajo

the external hard drive will now show up in my computer after a while , but tells me that i need to format disk before i can use it, odvs dont do that as ill loose eveyrthing , or?

tedpan

kayevajo wrote:

the external hard drive will now show up in my computer after a while , but tells me that i need to format disk before i can use it, odvs dont do that as ill loose eveyrthing , or?

Did you try removing the drive and putting it into a new enclosure yet?

kayevajo

unfortunatley, i wouldnt have the confidence to do that, i would e nervous that i would damage it further

The Nal

kayevajo wrote: »

unfortunatley, i wouldnt have the confidence to do that, i would e nervous that i would damage it further

Its not as difficult as you think

tedpan

kayevajo wrote:

unfortunatley, i wouldnt have the confidence to do that, i would e nervous that i would damage it further

Ah ok, that's what needs to be done. You might be best bringing it to a tech person.