External HDD detected but doesn't show up in explorer

Test Disk did not find any partition.

Partition Wizard said bad disk and could not help.

OK, this is gonnabe a hard nut to crack.

You have to try various other data recovery software and check whether lady luck smiles on you, before pronouncing that your HDD has gone north.

I am only hoping that some wise men here who had actually tried some good and free data recovery software come up with their experience and suggestions.

You may start with EaseUS Partition Recovery 5.0.1 Free Partition Recovery Software - Recover Deleted FAT/NTFS/Ext2/Ext3 Partition.

I have just read one other OP stating that it could see the files on his HDD which had turned RAW, but the trial version could recover only 1 GB of data. Let us know how it goes in your case.

Is there any better options if I do not want any data on the HDD?

Did you try to access it with another OS?

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

Do not give up easily.

Yes , you can try to initialise it and format it.

If Windows cannot do it you can try the HP USB Disk Storage Format tool HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8 Download - EXTREME Overclocking

But all these only after you have exhausted all avenues of data recovery.

Wait for other expert's opinion on this.

I will be grateful to anyone who can tell me what might be a possible cause for this problem?

jumanji said:

Did you try to access it with another OS?

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

Do not give up easily.

Yes , you can try to initialise it and format it.

If Windows cannot do it you can try the HP USB Disk Storage Format tool HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8 Download - EXTREME Overclocking

But all these only after you have exhausted all avenues of data recovery.

Wait for other expert's opinion on this.

I didn't try to access it with any other OS. Most of my friends have win7 so that's a difficult option. You have seen the condition of the HDD, do you think it's recoverable? How bad can a "BAD DISK" be?

..and is there any more options other than using recovery softwares?

TVeblen said:

If you initialize the disk, or format it, you will lose all data on the disk. Your first course of action should always be to back up or recover your data. Then work on reviving the drive.

Which brings us to an obvious question I haven't seen answered here: does the external drive work on another computer?

I have tried two other laptops both with win 7 32-bit. It didn't work. It got the same problem on both the laptops

TVeblen said:

Have you tried using a different data cable?

Thats a difficult option