0

I've used this external drive (WD ELEMENTS 1024 1TB) for some 4 years and stored a lot of data in it including music, photos and games in it because my C drive doesn't have much space.

It worked fine most of the time but sometimes after internsivly using it (playing games like GTA V or copying many files) the usage would go to 100% active time and I had to unplug it.

Recently I had the same problem and the drive won't respond so I re plugged it and now I can't access it.

It appears in the "my computer" tab without the storage and after I click on it the entire file explorer stops responding.

I also noticed that the computer is acting strangely and many MS programs crash randomly, but after I unplug it everything works fine.

I want to believe that the data isn't deleted because I must copy it to somewhere else.

enter image description here

enter image description here

DavidPostill
  • 153,128
  • 77
  • 353
  • 394
Tamir
  • 1
  • 2
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of [How do I recover lost/inacessible data from my storage device?](http://superuser.com/questions/241817/how-do-i-recover-lost-inacessible-data-from-my-storage-device) – DavidPostill Dec 05 '15 at 12:19
  • I'm truly sorry to hear about your issues with the WD Elements, @Tamir! :( This definitely doesn't seem good, I'd strongly recommend you to test the external's health and SMART status by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from [WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics for Windows](http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=xV2HbM). You should also try using a different USB cable with the HDD and try accessing your files from another computer. In the future, keep in mind that you should always keep at least one more copy of your data stored on a different location. Keep me posted with the results! – SuperSoph_WD Dec 09 '15 at 09:11
  • The drive is no longer detected.. luckily i managed to restore the data to another WD drive. My question is, how do I keep the new drive safe for a long time? should I unplugged it every time I don't use it or it doesn't matter? because the previous one was plugged in most of the time, and I use it as a normal drive to play games, music.. not as a backup drive – Tamir Dec 11 '15 at 10:16

0 Answers0