I recently plugged in an external hard drive of mine and noticed that it doesn't show up on the list of drives in Computer. I opened Disk Management (dskmgmt.msc) to check and it said that 'You must initialize a disk before logical manager can access it':
I didn't allow it to initialize and clicked 'Cancel'.
The drive shows up as Unknown, Not Initialized and Unallocated in Disk Management:
I ran GetDataBack for NTFS to attempt to recover my files and this is the screenshot of the log ~1 1/2 hours after it was first run:
It seems to me from the GetDataBack log that it is not reading any files at all. The log shows messages all looking like: Error 1117 in HD130: duringReadLba: LBA=43569984, CHS=-lx-lx-l, Cnt=64
Details: This is on Windows 7. Drive is formatted as NTFS. The drive is a 1 TB WD Elements, HDD model no: WD10JMVW, not often used and connected (only around 30 minutes every 2 - 3 days, just to move files from my main HD) and not more than a year old. I don't hear any clicking sound coming from the drive. The drive's status light works properly when it is being accessed by GetDataBack. It also shows up in Device Manager as 'working properly' and by its proper name (WD Elements 1048 USB Device). I tried accessing the drive in two different computers, and the same thing happens in Explorer, Disk Management and Device Manager.
WD Data Lifeguard is unable to read the SMART data. Here is the result when I attempt to run a 'quick test' with it:
Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WD Elements 1048
Unit Serial Number: [redacted]
Firmware Number: 1022
Capacity: 1000.20 GB
SMART Status: Not Available
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 08-Too many bad sectors detected.
Test Time: 22:31:42, July 29, 2015
Screenshot of Data Lifeguard messages:
HDD Guardian (a GUI for Smartmontools' smartctl) however, can read the SMART data:
Is there anything else I could do to attempt to recover as many of the files in the hard drive as possible?
EDIT: I opened up the enclosure to attempt to retrieve the HDD inside it and insert it as an internal drive to my computer as per suggestion from comments. However, it appears that I am not able to do this as it appears that the USB interface is connected to the HDD and can not be removed (there appears to be no SATA interface).