3 TB WD External Hard Drive NOT Working [ RAW ]

I have a serious problem.

I have TWO 3 TB WD External Hard Drives attached to my Desktop, and until a couple of days ago, they BOTH worked perfectly.

One of my 3 TB WD External Hard Drives has stopped working. There is power getting to it [ I also tried another power cable ], the HDMI cable is OK [ I also tried another HDMI cable ], but there is no vibration [ the disk spinning ] of it working.

I am really p***ed off because that had all my good stuff on it in one place and was due to be backed up soon anyway [ Years of stuff ].

I also tried the old trick of putting it into the freezer for 15 minutes to see if it would jump start the head [ hopeful I know, but I did have this work many years ago on another HDD ], but to NO avail.

I took the HDD out of the enclosure [ obviously removing the triangular circuit board with the power Port [ socket ], HDMI Port [ socket ], and the ON/OFF button ] and put it in my IDE/SATA Docking Station, and it sprung into life, although it gave the following results [ The 3TB WD is shown as Volume 6, Disk 2, and Drive E: ] . . .





However, if I use MiniTool Partition Wizard [ FREE - Portable ], it shows as Disk 3 . . .



I also tried Booting into Linux to see if I could retrieve the data, but also, to NO avail, it just did NOT show up.

Has anyone got ANY ideas please ?

Maybe one for @jumanji ?

It also shows this . . .

I have no idea how the WD external is hooked up.
But I would try hooking it up.... internally.

Ghot said:

I have no idea how the WD external is hooked up.

It is similar to this docking station . . .

Raw means its lost its paritions you need free parition recovery software once its partition comes back files will be there. You need to check the specs a lot of wd drives are encrypted and wont work on a normal interface.

It can loose paritions if the drive first sectors are toast

Thanks for the reply @Samuria,

Samuria said:

Raw means its lost its paritions you need free parition recovery software once its partition comes back files will be there.

I never physically setup ANY Partitions as it is purely used for data, films, series, photos, videos, etc.

Which one do you recommend please?

MiniTool Partition Wizard [ FREE - Portable ] perhaps ?

@Paul Black,

Sorry to hear about the problem. My first thought is that it is perhaps an advance formatted MBR drive.

I need full details of your 3TB Western Digial external.. Model No, Model name: Elements/My book/ Passport

If I remember correctly, surely I had helped another OP with almost similar problem. I have to dig out and find that thread. So give me sometime. Please do not try anything on your own till you hear from me. Just relax.

Note: If your WD external is Elements model you have better chances of recovering the data.

Thanks for the reply @jumanji,

jumanji said:

Please do not try anything on your own till you hear from me. Just relax.

It has been running perfectly for a couple of years attached to my Desktop !

It is a . . .

WD Elements Basic Storage 3TB External HDD
SATA/64MB Cache
Model: WDBWLG00030HBK-UESN - Off the Box
Model: WD30EZRX-00D8PB0 - Off the HDD itself

I will NOT do ANYTHING until I hear from you.
I have NOT actually done ANYTHING to recover the data so far either.
All I have done is REMOVE it from the enclosure, and insert it into my IDE/SATA Docking Station.

Thank you.

Hello @MaloK, thank you for the reply and detailed explanation, it is appreciated.

If I can get my files back, I will certainly consider converting the drive to GPT / NTFS, hopefully WITHOUT loss of data !

Paul Black said:

All I have done is REMOVE it from the enclosure, and insert it into my IDE/SATA Docking Station.

If this does involve encryption, then taking it out of the enclosure is probably NOT going to work as far as seeing or retrieving the data etc.

The reason I did this was because while it was in the enclosure, it did NOT work. There was NO vibration that you would get if the HDD was ACTIVE, hence removing it. Therfore, leading me to believe that the circuit board with the Ports [ Sockets ] I mentiond above, had stopped working !

However, I did CAREFULLY remove it from the enclosure, and if need be, I should be able to put it back together again. BUT, I would prefer it if I could retrieve the data FIRST, which will obviously save me time putting it back together, finding that it still does NOT work, and then taking it apart again, possibly causing damage.