Windows 7 - Hard Drive Not Recognized

My Western Digital MyBook 1.5 GB has recently stopped working. I spins for about 20 seconds, then stops. It is not recognized in windows explorer, but it is recognized in device manager and disk management.

Under disk management it says that it has 2047.35 GB unallocated space.
It also says the disk is unknown and not intitalized. When trying
to intitalize the drive, it says "The media is write protected".

I have tried swapping usb cables, running safe mode, and freezing it.

Any help would be amazing! Thanks!

Picture of Disk Management


Picture of Windows Explorer and drive properties

When a drive/parttition can be seen in the Device Manager and Disk Management, but does not show up in My Computer, most of the time it is only the partition table that is either missing or corrupt.

In such a situation my advice will be to try and fix it with the freeware Test Disk. The program runs in a command window and may be a little daunting to a new user but if one diligently goes through the step by step procedure given in the online documentation, it shouldn't be difficult. Download and documentation: TestDisk - CGSecurity.

Before the scan it says "Partition: Read Error.

When i start the scan, it goes "read error at 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, and up for hundreds maybe thousands of times.

The fact that the drive spins up for 20 seconds and then back down could mean it's already experienced a head crash. Do you also hear a soft rhythmic clicking before the spindown? So far, everything points to a damaged drive and a total loss of all data I'm afraid... (I could still be wrong however...)

WD Support / Downloads / Network Storage / My Book Live
try here for software available for your hdd

While what Corazon has stated may or may not be true, let me ascertain the procedure to regain access to a lost drive using Test Disk. Not to give up easily.

1. Right click on testdisk_win.exe and Run as administrator.

2. In the first window, select No Log, and press the ENTER key - makes life simpler.

3. The second window should show up all your drives including the lost drive. The capacities should be indicated correctly. Then you have life. Select the lost drive, Proceed, ENTER.

4. In the third window, select partition type, Intel Intel/PC partition, ENTER.

5. In the fourth Window, select Analyze, ENTER.

6. Do all partition/partitions in the selected lost drive show up in the fifth window? Good going. Select Quick Search, ENTER.

7. In the sixth window confirm whether the partition was created by Vista/(Windows 7). Press Y if yes/not sure. N otherwise.

8.Seventh Window: Test Disk should indicate first partition of your lost drive as bootable and "Structure: OK". Press ENTER to continue.

9. In the eighth Window select Write, ENTER.

10. In the ninth window confirm write partition table by pressing Y .

11. In the tenth Window asking you to reboot, Press ENTER.

12. Close Test Disk and reboot.

At some stage or other, Test Disk will take quite a time so be patient. Get away from your PC with only occasional peeps to navigate and user commands are required.