My WD hard drive won\'t load anything (Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 250GB External Hard Drive)

[Soulblazor]

[qanda]This thread is about the Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 250GB External Hard Drive. Click here to see full specs[/qanda]Hi, I have had my (WD2500U017-005) hd for about 2 years now and I have a lot of data that I do not want to lose on this drive. I just got another WD 7500H1U-00 hard drive for Xmas. I wanted to put all of my info onto the new drive and store it in case anything were to happen, I would have a back up. However when I plugged the new drive up, my old drive won't show up. The new drive is visible and I can access it. The old drive acts like it is loading up ( I see the blue light come on, and I can feel it running) I also hear my computer beep like it does when you plug in a new device and the little icon comes up to safely remove the drive, but it doesn't show up in my computer. I even tried to unplug the new drive and plug in the old one, but that doesn't work either. I tried putting the old drive on 2 different computers, but that doesn't work either! Is there any way to open my files and get them off of the old drive?? Thank you for your help. Josh

[Dogg]

Welcome to the forums!

With our PC powered off, connect the drive, power it on, and then power up the PC. After the PC boots, go into Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management…is your drive listed there?

[Soulblazor]

Yes, my drive is there. How do I open the drive though? I know that it is loading up, but I cannot access the information on the drive. Nor can I see it in my computer…

It says disk 1
232.88 GB unallocated

how do I get my information off of the drive?

[Dogg]

The unallocated description indicates that Windows thinks the drive is empty.

You can try a software recovery program. A google search will turn up several pages of applications. Most are not free, but will let you download, install, and test them before purchase.