How do I access my external hard drive to fix it?

Hi everyone,

I'm having trouble with my external hard drive, a 2TB Western Digital My Passport. I error-checked my hard drive via My Computer -> Properties (on the external hard drive) -> Tools -> Check Now (under error checking). It took incredibly long, left it for about 12 hours and it had only scanned maybe 5% of the hard drive so therefore I cancelled it. After I did this, it no longer appeared in My Computer any more, however it did pop up once or twice and hasn't since.

I've checked and updated all of my drives using Device Manager so I'm confident that there is no issue there. I can see the disk in Disk Management but it says unallocated or that it needs to be initialised, I can't really do anything there without running into an error such as "The request could not be performed because of an I/O error".

I've used tools such as WD Lifeguard, Minitool and WinHEX but I cannot access the disk in order to scan it. I am confident that this is not a physical issue with the drive but instead maybe the beginning of the drive has been corrupted.

Can anyone help me? I'm really desperate...

Thanks so much in advance.

I do but if I can't save it then I don't mind formatting the hard drive except I have been unable to do that too, what can I try?

Am I supposed to boot from my USB stick?

Okay...just spent the last few hours using Mint Mate although I doubted it'd work and it didn't. There is nothing wrong with my operating system, this is an external hard drive. I believe the beginning of the drive must be corrupted not allowing me to access it. Is there anything else I can try?

Can anyone help?

This is just one of the reasons why it is so important to maintain backups of important files. All files of any importance should have at least one backup copy, 2 or more backup copies if the files are of particular importance. Drives can fail at any time, often without warning or apparent reason. Recovery methods after an event cannot be relied on.

I don't believe the hard drive is physically damaged, just that the beginning lf the drive has been corrupted resulting in it not being able to be accessed. Surely there is a way to fix this, I don't mind wiping the hard drive clean again but I don't even know how to do that either.