2TB WD External is FRIED...

[AstaLaVista]

My friend bought this external drive less than 2 years ago and it has completely died on him (Is has a Rosewill w/fan case). Power is on but when you connect it to either the SATA port or USB port of the PC and it acts like if it wants to start and then nothing happens.

The very few times I was able to make it spin it showed "Disk Unknown, not initialized" on Disk Management. If I try to initialize it I get a CRC error so I tried Minitools Partition wizard and Recovery wizard from another post I saw back in May of 2013 to no avail because I can make it stay on (spinning) for long.

So, is there any way, tricks or voodoo that I can do to it to make it stay on for a couple of hours to see if I can save the data on it?

For the most part, when drives go bad, I have always been able to recover the data but this one is not cooperating at all.

I even went as far as to take it out of the case and plug it in directly to my pc and/or use the sata to USB adapter but this also didn't work.

I have a few recovery tool apps but if the OS can't even read it, there is absolutely nothing I can do. I will wait a few hours in hopes that it will miraculously cool off and it can be restart it again... I know, wishful thinking but that is all I got

 

[Bongo]

Have a look at this Save a Failed Hard Drive in Your Freezer, Redux

I have not tried it.

Jerry

 

[AstaLaVista]

Well, I thought that was a wife's tale but hell... nothing seems to be working now so even if we are not in April I am willing to try anything at this point.

 

[smarteyeball]

Make sure you put it in a zip lock bag though!

It will only give you a small window before it heats again.

Otherwise - swear, curse and say good bye.