External HDD not showing up in My Computer

Few days ago my External HDD started showing some weird behavior. It will crash sometimes when I copy/paste data to/from it. Usually removing and re plugging solved the issue (safe remove never worked after it'll do the above weird stuff, I had to just pull out the USB connector).

Then after some days, it finally crashed. I got an alert saying "Drive G: Needs to be formatted". I didn't format it of course.

Then after that, whenever I connect it, I can see the "remove safely" icon but it doesn't show up in "My Computer", and the green loading bar in My Comp keeps on loading and gets slower and slower as it reaches the end. (I find this really hilarious). Sometimes it does show up like in screenshot below



(My Ext HDD is "S:" in the picture, as explained below)

I tried changing the Drive letter after I read this

Here's a screenshot of Disk Management after My Ext HDD was renamed. But sadly the Disk management crashed at the end



Is there any way to get my data back ?

Second that essenbe...

You could also try connecting the drive to a different system to eliminate your OS as the source of the problems; other Windows, Linux, etc., systems you could try before giving up...

Hi there
99.9% of the time just re-assign it another letter in disk management and it will come up visible and useable.

This type of event often occurs when you are switching external hard drives between systems.

Cheers
jimbo

Right clik it in DM and select Properties...Post back with the info.
My guess is it'll be reported as RAW...

Hi cupid,

If you are unable to give a drive letter to the RAW drive, then you should straight away get into Data Recovery using the Partition Recovery Wizard in the Partition Wizard.

The thread Recover a flash drive turned RAW – Partition Wizard and TestDisk. should help you in using TestDisk or Partition Wizard for partition recovery.

Follow the steps carefully.

I would advise that you go with Partition Wizard first.

EDIT: Run Partition Wizard and put out a screenshot as to how your external drive looks in it.

Hi guys! Sorry for a late reply.

I did change the drive letter. Earlier it was I: and I changed it to S:.

The Disk Management does show it as RAW as patio said. Here's a screenshot of its Properties



The DMS crashed as soon as I took screen shot of the properties. Also it takes forever to load when my Ext HDD is connected.

I tried MiniTools but it didn't work. Here are some screen shots:



The File system says "Bad Disk"

and the Partition Recovery Wizard:



Double-clicking it doesn't show any files. Also, when I click Finish, it said "Some bad sectors ill be deleted". I don't know what that means so I cancelled the Partition Recovery Wizard . Also I noticed a weird thing, when Partition Recovery Wizard was checking sectors, it was continuously jumping between normal and not responding state.

One more thing, The system shows Format notification after a few minutes of connecting the HDD



I will try Seagate Data Recovery Software and post back with info

Seagate File Recovery Software diesn't even detect my Ext HDD. Here's a screenshot

Download Seatools for Windows. SeaTools | Seagate You can also read the guide there on using it.

Perform the long test and get the results.