1TB WD USB hard drive failure - is in Device Manager, not initialized

It may be too late, but here's another two cents worth of advice. If the external drive is in warranty, it will have to be sent back to be replaced, so your data is toast with that option, if you can't get it off before RMAing it.

So what I suggest, assuming your external drive is a 3.5" model, is to open it up. Google your model series, and you may even find a YouTube link which shows how to open it, if it's a difficult affair. Most, if not all the 3.5" drives in an external enclosure merely plug into bog-standard SATA power and signal connectors on a miniscule circuit board at the end of the enclosure, such as are in your PC, i.e., the MB SATA signal connector on the MB, and the SATA power supply cable coming from your power supply.

If you can get the HDD out of the external case, AND IF IT DOES NOT HAVE A SOLDERED/ONE PIECE SATA/USB, etc., connector, then just connect the HDD to your MB SATA, and power supply connectors. Then it will just be another (or a different on ... if you are disconnecting one to allow this to be used) drive hard-connected, like your current WD and Seagate. This may allow you to get more than the few - 15 minutes you currently have, to get your data off before the drive finally rolls onto its back with its feet in the air! And it will.

Now, this will void your warranty, although WDD was sympathetic to a friend of mine when he opened up an external HDD to get his data off before sending it to WD for replacement. He had a heat problem inside the case, and this is what may be happening in your situation. At any rate, if your data is very valuable, as you say, sometimes difficult times call for non-traditional solutions.

BTW, most 2.5" WDD 1tb externals have a solid/different connector on the back of the drive, part of a different drive board, so that this trick (connecting internally within a PC) won't/can't work. In your situation, though, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

jumanji said:

Just curious to know what happens at every stage when you run Test Disk.

Please have a look at the guide I had put out here .

In the second window does your WD HDD show up with the correct capacity?

If you get as far as the fifth Window, what does the fifth Window show?

Try to complete the process and give your stage by stage comment.

Now if you had gotten upto the fifth Window, you can select Backup. This should facilitate backing up whatever data is there on your HDD. Try and let us know what happens.

When it showed up an error message at some stage (at which stage ?) did you wait for a sufficient time? Did Test Disk say it cannot proceed further or you closed it even before Test Disk gave up?

You may appreciate none here could have tested Test Disk under actual troubled conditions and your feedback on it may help us.

Hope you will be able to recover the data on your HDD, even if it cannot be fixed.

At Window 2, when I select my hard drive and press enter, it hangs on that menu for 2 minutes, but then proceeds. It DOES show the correct capacity, though.

Window 5:


At Window 6, when I press Y and Enter, the Y doesn't show up, and it hangs on that screen for 40 minutes. Then it finally proceeds to the next window.

Window 7:


I don't know what to do from here, so I left it. I just know that I kept only one partition on that entire drive, NTFS formatted in Windows 7.

Thanks for the feedback on Test Disk. It indicates Read errors. You have also run the manufacturer's tool which also indicate serious Read/write errors which obviously it could not repair.( Once when my Paragon Imaging software refused to image a new Seagate drive stating there are I/O errors which needs to be checked with the manufacturer's tool, I ran SeaTools and fortunately it fixed up the problem. After that Paragon did image the drive. A year and half later the drive is still working fine with no problems)

As others and Corazon have opined Professional Data Recovery seems to be the only option.

Whether after all this should you try other Data Recovery software? Controversial. Opinions may differ.