External Hard Drive Crashes Windows Explorer and Computer

Question

Hello,

I’m currently experiencing a problem with my external hard drive, WD My Passport Ultra.

When I was transferring a file to the WD drive the wire got disconnected and now the drive does not work.

When I connect my drive to the computer, the green bar showing the drive loading in Windows Explorer moves very slowly and it gets stuck when it’s close to the end. During this time I cannot access any of the drives including my C drive, the WD external drive or my other internal drive. The green bar never finishes therefore I’m left without the ability to access any of my drives.

I cannot even disconnect my external hard drive to take it out. However if I was to pull the WD hard drive out of the USB port everything works again.

I have read through various forums and some people have had a similar problem, however non of the recommendations provided a solution.

I have tried command prompt to run Disk Check (CHKDSK) however this doesn’t work because when I type in the F drive (the letter allocated to the WD drive) it doesn’t recognise the drive to perform the check.

I have also downloaded some data recovery software EaseUS, Recuva, Disk Drill, however none of them work. I cannot even load the data recovery software if the WD is connected to my computer before accessing the data recovery software. When I access the data recovery software first before plugging in my hard drive it will crash the software immediately when I plug the drive in to the laptop.

I can’t even restart my laptop when the WD drive is plugged in. I click restart and everything shuts down but when it gets to the black screen that says restarting it just spins around continuously. I either hard restart the laptop or pull out the WD drive from the USB port.

I have tried using a different wire and it doesn’t work. I have also connected another external hard drive to my laptop to ensure the USB ports are OK and the other drives work. I have taken my WD drive and connected to another laptop and it still has the same problem.

I have connected to both USB A and C ports and nothing works. I have also gone and connected to my IPad’s USB C port and it doesn’t recognise the drive.

When the drive is connected to the laptop I can hear it spinning, not very load, and it does heat up but not overheat.

I have updated my laptop both on Windows update and via Dell updates therefore I should have the latest drivers.

I can’t remember what else I have tried, but I think the only thing left is to take the drive to a data recovery specialist. I’m not even sure if they can do anything about it.

If anyone who can help, it would be much appreciated. Hopefully I can still keep the data in the drive.

Answer 1

Hi

Welcome to Microsoft community.

I understand your issue with the WD My Passport Ultra drive. Based on your description, it seems like there might be some serious corruption or physical damage to the drive, especially given that it was disconnected during a file transfer.

If you've tried all of those troubleshooting steps (different cables, different computers, different ports) and none have worked, then the issue is likely with the drive itself and not with your computer or connection.

At this point, as you've suggested yourself, it would be best to take the drive to a professional data recovery specialist. They have advanced tools and techniques that can sometimes recover data from drives that are failing or corrupted in ways that standard software tools cannot handle.

However, do keep in mind:

1. Backup: Always ensure you have a backup of important data in future. Unfortunately in this case if professional recovery is not successful there may be no way to retrieve your data.
2. Data Recovery Cost: Professional data recovery can sometimes be expensive depending on severity of issue and amount of data to recover so please consider this aspect too.
3. Drive Health: Even if you manage to get your files back, I would strongly advise against using this drive for storing important files in future as once a hard drive starts showing such issues its reliability is compromised.

In future always safely eject external drives before disconnecting them physically from system as sudden disconnections during read/write operations can cause corruption or even hardware damage.

Please let me know if you need any further assistance. Thank you. 

Best regards

Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Wondering if you managed to resolve your issue - was the data recovery successful? I have the same issue and this is my 2nd WD drive that has become corrupt.