External HD not accessible. What could have gone wrong?

Question

I have a WD My Passport 1 TB HD which I purchased around an year ago. Two days ago, I copied a few files from my laptop (running Win 8.1) to this hard disk and then ejected it safely. I gave it to a friend of mine and he returned it back saying it is not working. When I plug it in my laptop, it gets detected but the drive does not appear. I opened Disk Management, but it gave an error that the disk must be initialized first. When I click on OK, it gives an error The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error.. The status of this disk is Not Initialized and Unallocated.

I tried to recover the partition using MiniTool Partition. But it ran for hours and didn't fix anything. Even tried Easeus Partition Manager, but still nothing. So today I ran Ubuntu and tried GParted, but it does not even detect this disk.

What could be wrong ? What can I do to troubleshoot this ?

The data inside is not too important but I'd really like to try more methods to fix this before getting a replacement (still under warranty).

Thanks for all your help in advance!

Solution

This error can be result of various things. It could be a hardware failure of some sort - the HDD could have died or the USB connector might be damaged, it could be a bad cable as well, as well as insufficient power going to the drive. But it could also indicate a damaged partition. I see you have tried some partition recovery software, so why not check the hardware? Could be something simple. ( I hope so)

First you need to make sure the drive gets enough power to spin. Try using a different USB 3.0 cable and the shorter the better. To make sure it gets enough power you can use a Y-USB cable or connect it through a powered USB hub.

Check it with WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3&lang=en

Comments

[Ramhound]

HDDs fail it's likely it was failing, without out, prior data before the failure it's hard to say what haopened

[Shubham]

@Ramhound I believe some single event led to this problem. Couldn't have been failing over time since every disk health check used to give it a good status. Maybe the friend dropped it somewhere. Can a faulty cable be the cause ?

[Ramhound]

You tell us if he dropped it. Based on the information you provided we could only guess which isn't helpful

[Shubham]

@Ramhound I can't be sure of that. I just wanted to know a few more methods to troubleshoot this.

[Shubham]

Okay. How does Windows detects the name and model of the disk when I connect it ? If the port is dead, then I guess data transfer between the computer and disk should be affected completely. Am I wrong in assuming so ?

[user3767013]

I had a similar failure, as the HDD failed to spin on because the USB module did not supply enough energy. Obviously the name and model of the HDD will be transmitted without spining disks, but no data was transfered.

[Shubham]

I tried WD DLD, but it does not even detects the disk. Will try connecting with a different cable and update the result here.

[Shubham]

Tried with a different USB cable. Same result. I guess the disk is damaged physically :( Will send it for replacement.

[Techpumpkin_WD]

I'm sorry to say that, but in this case there is nothing else you can do yourself. Hope you didn't loose too much data.