WD external HDD cannot be accessed, system not responding.

redus1990 · 15 Oct 2014

Hello everyone.
I have a WD portable external HDD about 2-3 years now. Haden't any problem till now. Yesterday i plugged in my HDD to my laptop and it worked as always. Then i extracted a rar file but couldn't wait and i force closed the extraction. After that my every action in the HDD was slower, copying, cutting... I tried to extract the same rar again but because of the very slow speed i again force close from task manager the winrar process. The next time i plugged in the HDD it wasn't recognized like before, it was shown like a local disk. Any attempt to access it is useless, system not responding. Even tried from various program to access it but same result. Device manager same result. HDD's light is on and it looks like is writing all the time. Also i can't perform a chkdsk from within windows because nothing happens. I always safe remove it. Someone told me should open the case and try another connection like SATA or something, i don't really know... I tried many of the solution written in the forum but no result....
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

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WD external HDD cannot be accessed, system not responding.-wd1.jpg

MightyMiroWD · 16 Oct 2014

Hi there.

Did you try to connect the external drive to another computer to see if it's going to be recognized?
If it's not, can you run extended test with the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and tell me what the results are?
WD Support / Downloads / Other Products / Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

redus1990 · 16 Oct 2014

Thank you MightyMiroWD for your replay.
I've tried the diagnostic tool before and also the chkdsk from safe mode with command prompt but nothing. Any of the apps i tried freezes. It seems weird to me the fact that the last time it worked, after the force close of extraction, the speed of writing and reading in HDD were much much slower. Has a HDD any calibration of speening speed? Maybe it runs very slow now or maybe its stuck in the last action taken...
I haven't try to connect it in another pc... But is there any possibility to work with another pc?

redus1990 · 16 Oct 2014

Hey guys something weird happened. I had the HDD plugged in and i had forget that i had run the diagnostic tool. After a while the test result appeared like a miracle... Everything, from the light to the icon of the HDD went to normanl. I can't explain it... But the speed of copy, move etj is reduced to kb/s. I dont understand why this happened. Is there a possibility that the usb cable is damaged and the information can't get through to fast?

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mjf · 16 Oct 2014

The flimsy micro B USB 3 connector is not a good design. The large part of the connector corresponds to USB 2 and the small USB 3. Over time USB 3 connectivity can become intermittent and you can fall back to USB 2 even in a USB 3 port. I've seen this on the same sort of WD elements drive as well as WD MyBook essentials. A change of cable may help.

Edit: This situation should still drop you down to USB 2 speeds.

MightyMiroWD · 17 Oct 2014

I would suggest to try a different cable and if possible on a different USB port as well. :)

redus1990 · 17 Oct 2014

Thank you mjf and MightyMiroWD for your information. I'll try another cable as soon as possible. I want to ask, what do the results of the diagnostic tool, posted below, mean?

test result:

MightyMiroWD · 17 Oct 2014

Unfortunately, these results suggest that the drive is developing bad sectors and it is going to fail at some point.

My advise would be to save the resulting from Data Life Guard, back-up the information you have on it, and try to RMA the external if it's still under warranty. Here's the link where you do that:
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index.asp?wdc_lang=en

Hope everything turns out fine.

mjf · 17 Oct 2014

I'd try another cable but also backup data as a high priority.