WD Caviar Green 2TB External Hard Disk Help Please

I have an external hard disk and it is a WD Green 2TB Hard Disk, a few months ago my hard disk crashed and now I cannot access the hard disk at all.

I am on a laptop running Windows 7 Pro and so connect the hard disk to the laptop via a USB 2.0 To SATA cable. The hard disk is powered by a separate power cable connected to it.

When I connect the hard disk to my laptop I can hear that it powers up and it starts to spin initially, it also makes what sounds like a ticking type of sound at the beginning. My laptop does not pick up the hard disk, if I go to "My Computer" I can see my laptop hard drive which is drive "C:\", and I can see my DVD drive which is drive "D:\".

If I go to Device Manager and look under the Disk drives I can see my laptop hard drive and it shows a USB device

I have seen some people say look for it under the heading "Other Devices" but I do not have that option.

When I click on the "Disk Management" option I can see the external disk on the bottom half of the screen on the right hand side. On the top half it only shows the local disk (C:\) but on the bottom half I can see my local disk and I can see that it has detected my external disk. The external disk is picked up as "Disk 1", there is a small red arrow pointing downwards on the image of the disk. Below the disk image it says "Unknown" and below that it says "Not Initialized". Unlike my local disk, it does not recognize any information about my external drive.

When I right click this with my mouse I get the following 4 options:

1. Initialize disk
2. Offline
3. Properties
4. Help

If I select the option to initialize it it gives me an option to select either MBR or GPT. I have tried selecting both methods and I get the same error message which reads "The device is not ready". If I select the second option I get the same error message which reads "The device is not ready".

I have my honeymoon photos on this disk and I hope that I have not lost those photos for good. Can someone please give me advice on what I can try in order to try and recover my photos?

I have installed EaseUS Data Recovery v8.6 and Power Data Recovery v6.5 and both software do not recognize my external hard disk.

Can someone please give me advice on how I can try and get my laptop to pick up the hard disk and then to try and recover my honeymoon photos?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thank you,

@Mellon Head - I did try and initialize but both options do not work as the drive is not picked up. I don't have access to a motherboard or at least not that I can think of as everyone I know seems to either have laptops or tablets. I will double check with friends and family to see if anyone has access to a PC where I can connect it directly via SATA cable. Two years ago I got rid of a PC which did have SATA connectors through that motherboard, never one around when you need one!

@MightyMiroWD - I did actually download the Data Lifeguard Diagnotics and ran that to test using that. I only ran the first two tests and both tests took about a second to complete. I know that the second test should take longer than that. Also, the diagnostic tool detected that it was a USB drive but it picked it up as 0.00GB in size which is why both tests took about a second each and it passed both which is also not correct. I have just got into work and so not able to take any screenshots but I will do so and attach them when I get home tonight. Stupidly last night I could not see the attach button to add photos so did not attach photos with my original post. Now that I have worked out where the attach button is, I will add photos later tonight.

Just to give a bit more info if I did not make that clear in my original post. I have taken the drive out of the enclosure but because I am on a laptop I am having to use a USB 2.0 to SATA cable to connect it to my laptop.

Thanks,

I have attached four screenshots to show what I am seeing:

1. This shows the Disk Management screen and as you can see on the bottom right it has been picked up as "Disk 1" but no other information has been picked up.
2. This shows Device Manager picks up a USB disk drive but not quite sure what type of drive it is as there is no other information.
3. This is the WD Diagnostic tool main screen and you can see it has picked up a USB drive but no other information.
4. This shows that a quick test passed but it's not accurate.
5. This shows that an extended test passed but again this is not accurate either.

I will try and see if I can connect the drive directly via a SATA cable to a motherboard but I won't be able to do that at least till the weekend at the earliest. In the meantime is there anything else that people can suggest that I try?

Thanks.

I managed to plug the drive directly to the motherboard and it did not work
The drive powered up and started spinning and I could hear that ticking type of noise which goes on for about 30 seconds to a minute when the drive powers up but then stops.

I checked device manager and it did not pick up the hard drive at all, I also looked in Disk Management and that also did not pick up the drive at all. It is weird how when connected via USB the system knows it is some sort of disk drive but connected directly to the motherboard and it did not pick up at all.

Can anyone please suggest something else that I can try? I really don't want to part with my honeymoon photos.

Thanks,

Looks like I will have to go down the data recovery company route, thank you to all for the support!