I have a 5TB WD Black external drive, and it got unplugged accidentally while connected to a loose USB port on my computer tower. Ever since then, my computer has been extremely slow and showing warnings in the event viewer indicating that the drive is malfunctioning. I'm getting messages like, "Failure status: A device which does not exist was specified" and other errors when trying to access it. Unfortunately, I can't run chkdsk because my computer can't communicate with the drive at all! Is there any way to fix this issue?
2 Answers
Is this a USB drive? If so, you could try taking the drive out of its casing and connecting it directly to your PC's SATA ports. Sometimes, the USB interface can fail while the actual drive itself is still functional. Just be careful if you're going this route!
It sounds like your drive might be dying or already dead. If your computer can't recognize it at all, that's not a good sign. You could try connecting the drive to another computer just to see if it behaves differently, but if you get the same errors, it’s likely toast. Sorry to hear about that, especially since it was a pricey drive!
It's so frustrating! I really hope there's some way to recover it.
Yeah, it is external. I'll look into that option!