External Hard Drive showing up but won't open

Hello,

I'm having an issue with my external hard drive. I plug it into my computer and it powers up and registers as being there, but clicking on it leads to a spinning blue circle for an hour or so, after which I'm given a notification that "the drive is not accessible" and the "semaphore timeout period has expired." I'm not sure what to do or how to go about trying to access the drive. The prelude/likely cause of this issue, was when I was transferring data between the hard drive and my computer and things went haywire - everything slowed down, froze for about 15 minutes, seemed moments away from crashing, and I restarted the computer after closing everything I could.

I run an MSI GE76 Raider laptop with Windows 11. The external hard drive is a WD MyPassport. Please let me know if you need any further information. Thank you for your time.

Gen Info.

I would just run chkdsk /r command on the Win11 drive...then attach the USB drive and try to run the chkdsk /r command on it.

Louis

Hi, Welcome to BC.

You Can try here : https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/downloads/softwaredownloads

Please always when posting include the full model information for your MSI GE76 Raider as it is important information to help you.

So for a plain : MSI GE76 Raider select your own country. in a Google Search or supply your missing information.

There is multiple models to pick from....pick the right one or you can search with your unknown model info

Edited by Pkshadow, 09 February 2024 - 08:52 PM.

I've seen where an external drive would choke on one computer and work fine on a different computer. How does the drive act when attaching it to a different computer?

Thanks for the responses. I did a chkdsk /r command for the Win11 drive, which hasn't changed the issue; although now clicking on the external hard drive produces a notification that the "drive is not accessible" because "the parameter is incorrect." Doing a chkdsk /r on the external drive gives the response that "The type of the file system is NTFS." After a while it went into Stage 1 of the examination and at 3% it seems to have stopped, listing an ETA of 999:00:00 and not updating any file progress. I'll leave it on for the night and check back tomorrow to see if there's any progress, though for now it doesn't seem to be producing much of an effect. 

To BC Advisor's post, the Raider model is 11UG. The system is x64-based, with 17K3.1 SKU. Let me know if there's more info you need - my apologies if I'm leaving out anything important, it's due to ignorance.

From the link you provided I downloaded the WD Drive Utilities. Under Diagnostics, running a Drive Status Check gives it a "SMART status passed." Running a Quick Drive Test gives it a "Quick Drive Test failed." I'm now having it run a Complete Drive Test, which I'm confident will give a similar failure result. That test says it will take several hours so I will update once that comes back.

In the meantime if there's anything else I can do please let me know, otherwise I'll just wait to see if there are any results from those two scans.

I've seen where an external drive would choke on one computer and work fine on a different computer. How does the drive act when attaching it to a different computer?

Good idea, hopefully by tomorrow the chkdsk scan will have completed or utterly failed, I'll try it on another computer then.

(Is there a safe way to cancel a chkdsk procedure, or should I just click the red X and be done with it?)

Don't cancel a chkdsk. But, I you talking about the chkdsk command or the WD test. Never cancel a chkdsk command. I would also not stop the WD extended test.  But, if the WD software said the drive failed the Quick Test I believe your drive could be failing. Still I would see how the drive acts on a different computer.

The WD Complete Drive Test actually came back within a couple minutes, with the expected "Test Failed." The chkdsk is also somewhat progressing, though at a rate of about 1 file every few minutes - it got up to 74,000 thousand files fairly quickly and now is at this reduced rate. This makes me concerned that the ETA of 999 hours is sadly accurate. I ask about cancelling the chkdsk because, while my hope is that it gets through this rough patch and speeds up, I don't have 999 hours to wait for this if it doesn't (which also precludes me disconnecting it and checking another computer)

If chkdsk is progressing that slow then cancel it. You can attempt to recover the files using scanning software but if the data is non-replaceable and important you may want to consider a professional recovery service which is not cheap.

Does the drive produce clicking sounds?  More than usual?  Like when it's trying to read the same file, many retries?  That would be another indicator that the drive is only good for recycling.

After the night, the progress of the external hard drive chkdsk sits at "Progress: 313577 of 1948672 done; Stage: 16%; Total:  0%; ETA: 999:00:00." It is also filled with segments like: "File record segment 1F759 is unreadable. File record segment 1F75A is unreadable. File record segment 1F75B is unreadable. File record segment 1F75C is unreadable. File record segment 1F75D is unreadable." There are dozens of these, I can list them all if that would be helpful.

So it seems to be making good progress at points, then hits patches where it slows down tremendously for several hours. Currently I clock it at about 1 file every 2 minutes. My hope is that all of those rough patches are at the start of this scan, where it still is. Perhaps that's a vain hope? I'm willing to let it run some more (perhaps another day or two?) but if someone were to tell me this is going to continue for the entire scan then it seems pointless. Advice?

To Dominique's question, the drive is not producing any audible clicking sounds, though it is generally pretty quiet.

What kind of scanning software is available to recover the files? I'd like to get them back, though depending on pricing for a professional service I may not consider it worth it. With these kinds of results I'm not hopeful that another computer would have much luck properly connecting to it. Should I wait a little longer and see if it's able to push through these rough patches? Or should I cancel the chkdsk and try recovering the files on my own at this point?

Parts of the drive unreadable?  

Read this for a few useful recovery tools:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/790593/recover-data-on-external-hard-drive-after-creating-bootable-disk-by-mistake/

Running chkdsk on a failing drive is not recommended. What will happen is chkdsk will give you dozens of chk files and that will reduce you chances of recovering files.

https://superuser.com/questions/124690/what-can-i-do-with-chk-files-in-found-000-folders

https://www.howtogeek.com/282798/what-are-the-found000-folder-and-file0000chk-file-in-windows/

Running chkdsk on a failing drive is not recommended. What will happen is chkdsk will give you dozens of chk files and that will reduce you chances of recovering files.

 

https://superuser.com/questions/124690/what-can-i-do-with-chk-files-in-found-000-folders

 

https://www.howtogeek.com/282798/what-are-the-found000-folder-and-file0000chk-file-in-windows/

Okay, sounds like this is definitely a failing drive. So at this point should I cancel the chkdsk and try recovering the files with something like Testdisk?

Testdisk is only good for drives that have lost the partition table. For recovering files from a failing drive you would use scanning software. PhotoRec is included with Testdisk but any files recovered have generic names with the correct extension. There is also Recuva but I don't have much experience with it.

https://html5.litten.com/windows-file-recovery-series-part-1-recover-deleted-files-with-recuva/

If the files are non-replaceable like photos then you might want to read the below link. The program used is ddrescue that will attempt to read a sector 3 times before giving up. Read the information in the link twice before deciding if you want to use ddrescue. You would need another USB drive as explained in the below link.

https://html5.litten.com/make-full-image-of-broken-raw-infected-or-encrypted-hard-drive-with-free-tools/