Most of the time the actual disk is fine and something between the disk and the computer (cable, port, bridge board, partition table, etc.) has gone out. Working through each of these options does not cost you anything and most of the time resolves this issue for you.
When your drive spins quietly but doesn’t appear anywhere, it’s generally an electronic problem. When your drive makes clicking/ticking noises or spins up and down, that is generally a problem with the physical mechanics, and as such the solutions are just about opposite of each other.
Begin at the cable (the most likely failure point & the least expensive to fix): internal failures of USB cables show no visual damage, and the cable that comes with your hard drive is probably the weakest link in the entire system. Try another port (preferably from the computer directly) instead of using a hub to connect your hard drive, as a 2.5-inch hard drive drawing power via USB may not spin when connected to a low powered hub. If it is a 3.5-inch desktop unit with a power brick, swap the brick if you can, because dead power supplies are constantly mistaken for dead drives.
Try to use another computer entirely. It will give you an idea of whether your problem is due to a fault with the drive or just something going wrong on that one machine.
A “drive” doesn’t have to mean you see a drive letter assigned by Windows. If you do see a “disk” in Windows Disk Management, and that disk shows up as being unallocated, RAW, etc., then the issue isn’t with the hardware. The problem lies within the partition/file system. On a Mac, run “Disk Utility”, check “Show All Devices” when running it. If you don’t see any mounted volumes under a physical device listed there either, this gives you the same message.
The most important of everything you can test is this: if the drive is visible to the system, but cannot be mounted, then it’s an issue with the file system (these are usually recoverable). If the drive isn’t visible to the system at all, then it’s either an electrical or a mechanical issue.
When the drive turns on, hold it to your ear. If you hear only a quiet spinning motion with no clicks and nothing appears, that suggests the USB bridge board has failed and not the actual hard drive. On many external drives the failure of the bridge happens at least as often as the mechanical part of the hard drive itself. There is likely a good chance to fix this situation and get data off a “healthy” disk.
If you hear a clicking/ticking/grinding/and/or continuous spin-up-and-stop when attempting to turn on the drive, then there is a mechanical issue. Unplug it immediately. At a desk, you will accomplish nothing positive, only make things worse.
Although it may be appealing to pull the drive out of a failed enclosure and simply plug in the drive, don’t do this, particularly with Western Digital. The encryption keys reside on the bridge boards (on most modern My Passport and My Book models) therefore you will receive an “unformatted” result reading from a perfect bare disk and allowing Windows to initialise it at that time can cause significant harm. Ship all external drives as they came originally, including the original enclosure.
After a free 48-hour diagnostic and with a written quote, an individual external drive costs from £300 +VAT, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
Usually, this will be something other than the hard disk (cable, port, power supply, or bridge board) and you should work your way down the list of possibilities; try a different cable, then use a different port directly connected to the machine, then connect to a different computer, before checking to see whether the drive shows up in Disk Management or Disk Utility at all.
It indicates that the hardware is functioning correctly, but there is a problem either with the partition table or with the file system. In most cases the recovery is possible. Do not accept any prompts to initialise or format, because initialising or formatting causes a brand new partition table to be written over the top of the necessary information to rebuild the old one.
No. Especially with Western Digital drives. For example, on most modern My Passport and My Book units, the encryption key sits on the bridge board. So a bare disk reads as unformatted even though it may be good, and initialising it at that time can cause serious harm. Please send complete external units.
Yes. The noise (clicking, ticking, grinding) is the result of physical wear on the device’s mechanisms, not electronic components. Each additional time you turn the unit back on can cause greater physical harm. Please unplug the unit immediately and do not use it again. No matter how many times you try to connect it via different cables or run software, it will continue to experience problems and attempting a surface scan will cause further damage.
Pricing for an external hard drive recovery starts from £300 plus VAT per unit depending upon the specific requirements of the unit and will be fixed in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data. All work carried out with donor units requires a 50% deposit prior to commencement of the project. The remaining balance will only be invoiced when we notify you that your files have been recovered.