WD hdd powers on, but ABSOLUTELY no recognition anywhere

[joeyyep]

It was originally an external, and didn't show up all of the sudden. So took it apart and connected it to the sata and power cable, and nothing. not even in the bios. I have 1.5 TB of important stuff on there, is it damaged? It makes a power up sound when plugged it. I am really upset and will be grateful for any help. Thanks.

 

[essenbe]

Right click computer, select manage, in the left column select disk management and see if it is shown there. If it is and is without a drive letter, in the lower part of the screeen right click the drive, select change drive letter or path, next screen select add and give it a drive letter. It will then show in explorer. If during this process it wants to format the drive, do not do it. You will lose everything on it.

 

[joeyyep]

It doesn't say any of that. Nothing happens when I plug it in, maybe it could be a software problem and maybe it is the hard drive. It started happening after my computer was really laggy and I did a restore. But then I restored again to a really early date and nothing happened

 

[essenbe]

Did you go to Disk Management? Try going to BIOS and see if it appears there. If it appears in neither place, it very likely is either not connected properly or is dead.

 

[joeyyep]

It doesn't appear in bios, I connected it two ways; via USB and Sata cable. It still spins which is why I've got hope. But is there a way to remove all the files?

 

[essenbe]

Recovering files from a hard drive that can't be read is almost impossible without professional recovery which is usually several thousand dollars. But, you can try to recover them from a live linux program. Here is the tutorial to do it with Linux Mint Mate. If you are familar with linux, there are other smaller distros, but mate is usually easier to understand for purely Windows users. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/287439-emergency-kit-save-your-files-dead-os.html
I know it is not an OS disk, but it will work with any disk drive. You will just need some place to copy them to.

 

[joeyyep]

So is there anything I can try to fix the hard drive? Because it is actually spinning and functioning, I have no clue what could be wrong. I had so much on there it is going to be hell for me. I would've backed up but I didn't think this would fail me like that.

 

[essenbe]

There is nothing you can do to fix it. Opening the case will destroy any data. I've pretty much told you everything I know. A professional recovery company can usually get most or sometimes all of it, but that can cost several thousand dollars. As far as I am aware, there is no way to recover data if the drive cannot be seen in Windows or the bios. If it can't be seen nothing can be recovered from it. My rule #1 is never trust a hard drive. All my data is backed up to 3 different drives. You may try to change or re seat the cables. It could be a bad cable or a loose connection. Other than that, I'm sorry to tell you there is no way I know of.

 

[joeyyep]

Alright well thanks for the advice. I guess I gotta start from scratch lol.