USB hard drive Unknown and not initialised

freya306 said:

Hi I have a 1TB external USB hard drive, it is not showing up in 'my computer' the light on the hard drive is constantly flashing and randomly beeps and clicks when first plugged in, I have never heard this until today..

Sounds like your Ext HDD has failed.

freya306 said:

I have tried it on two laptops, windows 7 and windows 10 and in a macbook, does not show up.

freya306 said:

I have tried a different cable from another USB device, still no luck.
It appears in device manager which says it is running normally, I have tried un-installing and re-installing, no luck! In disk manager it says the disk is unknown and not initialised, see screenshot.
Reading other forums suggest trying Minitool partition wizard it comes up but as 0GB, screenshot
Please help me recover my device, it has a lot of data on it that I don't want to lose! I hope it is still there!

Depending on the failure mode, you may be able to grab your data using a recovery program. However, with clicking noises, that seems to be a mechanical failure, and doesn't sound hopeful. Good luck!

freya306 said:

I've tried on EaseUS recovery however it doesn't appear on there as a drive to allow me to scan it

Try Recuva.

What brand HDD is this? Western Digital?

freya306 said:

if i try 'not sure where to scan' and it scans everywhere it comes up with this message, I'm assuming thats my hard drive..

Looks like \\HarddiskVolume2 is your failed drive and this scanned your system drive. If you scroll down the window, do you see your files? Probably not.

freya306 said:

No, none of my files are there.
Could re initialising the disk in disk manager then trying to recover the files be a possible solution?

Not sure - I don't know if that would do any more damage or if it would even initialize at this point (because it appears to be a mechanical failure).

Depending on how important your data is and how badly you need it recovered, it may be time for a professional recovery service.

Or, Spinrite might help, but it's not free.

I know now is not a good time, but best practice is 3-2-1 for backups: 3 total, 2 alternating on-site and 1 off-site.