WD My Book clicking sound and not being detected

[Riruka]

First I plugged the adapter, then my external drive light up, after a few moments it made a weird clicking sound.
While plugged at my laptop, it's installing like it's new.. I don't know what to do and I want to back up my files

I searched here in the forums for possible solution.. but nothing here is a screen shot on devices and printers.

but I can't see it on My Computer It's not making any weird sounds now, Just on first open. And the led light is still on. Hope you can help me out. Thank you and Good Day!

 

[matts6887]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news; but; usually whenever a hard drive makes a clicking noise such as what you mentions yours is doing; it means there is a internal hardware issue with the drive and the drive is probably dead unfortunately. You can try removing it from the devices section of the system section of the device manage via the control panel and see if you can get it to re-detect it; but again; generally whenever there is a clicking sound unfortunately it means the drive is most likely toasted.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Drives do an initial "seek" operation when first starting -- so it's usual to hear some clicking noises at first, but if the sounds continue, that means that seek attempts are failing and that often indicates underlying hardware failures.

WD has a downloadable diagnostic app (sorry, don't remember it's name), but you could use that to check out the drive to see if it fails.

 

[Riruka]

the weird sound is different from it's before. it's louder and like an error
it will make sounds at first but will soon stop. Is there any way I can back up my files?

 

[Mark Phelps]

Is there any way I can back up my files?

Most likely not.

There are some data recovery apps that might work. One free one is Recuva. One you can download and try for free is RecoverMyFiles. But in both cases, you need to stop using the drive, connect it to a working PC, install the data recovery app on that PC, and see what works.

 

[DKnowWD]

Hello there Riruka,

It could also be a power issue. I would recommend you to try your WD My Book with different USB and power cables.
Do you see the device in Disk Management? As Mark Phelps alreadey suggested, you can try to test it with the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool and see whether it detects some issues.

If nothing helps and the information stored on the device is important, I would advise you to contact some of the WD's data recovery partners. It is probably the most reliable way to get your data back. Keep in mind that using third party software may further damage the drive or corrupt the data.

Useful links:
WD's KB article on the issue: WD external hard drive makes a repeated clicking sound
DLG Tool: WD Support / Downloads / Other Products / Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows
WD's Data Recovery Partners: WD Support / Data Recovery Partners

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD