Windows 7: System hangs when external hard disk is accessed

This is the result I got when I ran the quick and extended tests. So now is there no hope that it may work properly?

Try to copy as much data from the external as possible and then run a 'clean all' command from diskpart. We can provide instructions if needed. I would then contact Western Digital for an RMA.

Did you run the DOS version of the tool? As experienced by some users the DOS version was able to repair the bad sectors, when the Windows version failed to.

In any case, as essenbe says, your first priority now is to recover as much data as possible, before trying out anything ( if you consider that you do have some important data you may not like to lose ).

First use Recuva and check whether it can do the job.

If it fails, the next option I would try is to access the drive with another OS and copy the data if possible.

Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer

(In your case the copy process will be from the faulty external drive to your C drive or any other internal partition - space permitting - or to another external drive.)

I am yet to try the DOS version. And I will try my best to copy the important data from it. But the system simply hangs whenever i try. But I will try again. Thanks jumanji and essenbe.

I don't know if this will help, but there is a good tutorial here ablou how to copy/paste from the recovery console.

There was nothing I could do about it. So I gave it for replacement, since it is under warranty. Thanks a lot for trying to help me out...

Guys, I used to face one very critical issue with my 320GB external Hard Drive. I am using windows 7.

PROBLEM:
Wheneven I used to connect the drive, the system used to freez completely. Hard reboot used to be the only way out.
Wait, life is not back on track yet. During reboot, the machine keeps on waiting "starting widows" screen. The next option used to be hard reboot again and keep pressing F8 button, select "boot into last known good configuration" and then you take the breath of relief.
Never dare to connect the drive again.

SOLUTION:
Initial guess was Symantec endpoint protection, thinking it starts the scan process and goes into huge data processing loop. Tried to disable but as it was office laptop and was installed with the client version only, not allowed.

The culprit turned out to be a different security software which was installed in this machine. "Bit9", name itself sounds scary. Had to disable the running service "Parity agent" and the smile is back on face. Hard drive is working well.