Windows 7: Think my Hard drive just crashed! What to do?

What can I do? I have important stuff on that drive for work.

Is it really toast?

Heres the story.



Its a Western Digital 320 GB a few years old. It's been in a USB enclosure on top of my computer its whole life and I was just putting the door back on my computer when boom the drive shutdown. I haven't heard it making funny noises or anything lately. So i took the enclosure and i've tried plugging it into different USB ports and it just won't start.

Is there anything else I can do?

Should I try putting it inside the computer?

Hi, if it's crashed then yes I would recommend if possible trying it out inside your PC. If by chance it does work make sure you copy over any important files right away.

If it doesn't work you may have to send it to a specialist data recovery company who can hopefully retrieve at least some if not all of your data.

Unfortunately unlike software when hardware dies there's not that much that can be done on our end.

Oli

yea u can put it inside and see if that works but taking it to a data recovery company is stupid it will cost thousands of dollars to recover the data

Hi, I might have similar problem. My computer was backing up files from "C" drive to "D" drive, and downloading updates. when updates was done it asked me to restart my computer which I did. After it restarted, it asked to continue backing up files, but it cannot find/located the "D" drives. In BIOS I have 2 drives "0" and "1" but only one ("C") in "Computer" What happen to the "D" drive. Can somebody from this forum help. Thank you.

2 possibilities, power supply went out or the drive has crashed...

Backups may have corrupted the driver for the drive.
Try using the restore point before the updates were installed and re-boot.

Adrian

I already tried the restore but my "D" drive still not showing, but thanks for responding. I will try and search this forum and maybe find some solutions

Have a look in Disk Management - maybe it just needs a drive letter assigned.

Type disk management in start search box - click "create and format hard disk partitions"

Hi SIW2

Thanks for the response, but I don't know what to do after clicking the "Create and format....". Can you please tell me in detail what to do. I am not the savvy in computer. Thanks again

If you see the partition there, rt click it and select "Change Drive letters and paths".

Click Add , click OK.