Recovery Force® Data Recovery Forum

I have WD Passport external HDD and yesterday, when I was transferring some photos to it, the transfer suddenly stopped. I thought nothing of it, retried a few times - nothing. So I restarted my PC and after that, the drive didn't work anymore. When you connect it to a PC, the white LED keeps blinking all the time and for a minute or so, the disk makes an intermittent clicking noise. After that, it becomes pretty silent or makes its regular, pretty quiet shuffling sound (though the LED keeps blinking all the time).

When you plug it in, the PC does recognize it in some way, though, because you can hear the sound of a new USB device being connected and see it listed as a USB device (WD Hard Drive) in the system tray. It's not visible in the explorer, though, and recovery software like Kroll OnTrack does see it as some "unrecognized drive" but can't start recovery because neither its Scan or Deep Scan features find any partitions. I've also tried the Disk Management tool that's built into Windows but it only shows it as an unrecognized drive, asking whether I want to initialize it because it claims it's not yet initialized.

What else may I try? I'd really like to get the files out of it because these are basically all my photos and videos from the past years Having it restored by professionals, on the other hand, would be madly expensive. I've tried different USB ports, different machines (desktop PC, laptop, Mac laptop) but all to no avail. I've also thought about connecting it straight to my motherboard but after removing the enclosure, the connectors look like this so I don't even think that's possible without some soldering. Is there anything else you'd recommend that may help get the data out of the drive?

The clicking is from the heads bouncing back and forth, unable to read the service tracks. The drive going silent is because the drive spins down to avoid causing further damage. This is likely due to damaged heads and/or media and is not something that you will be able to handle on your own.

If the data is of value to you, it is best to seek professional data recovery assistance before the damage becomes fatal.

...it may still be possible for a professional to recover the data without a head change, making the cost of the recovery only a few hundred bucks.

Thank you both the replies. Do you think I should try buying a new cable as the last option for doing something on my own before turning to a professional (which I currently am unable to pay for so the HDD will have to wait in the drawer for a few months before I save up anyway) or is there no way that simply trying a new USB3 micro B connector would be enough?

Buying an outside cable is not going to solve the inside heads problem.