How to fix: external hdd not accessible

Question

The WD-My Book 500GB is recognized as a local disc in my system (Windows 7), but it's drivers fail to install successfully when connected via usb cable with computer. Then when I try to open it (explore), it slows down the pc, and after some minutes it displayes the message: 'F:\ is not accessible'. And after some time it shows another message asking me to format it. I really do have important data i wanna get from it, so i can't format it.

Till now I have tried the following, none of them succeed:

• using a scanning\fixing thing from Hiren CD,
• accessing from a suse(linux)live CD,
• accessing the hdd from safe mode of my PC,
• tried on a pc running vista OS,
• googled for a solution, nothing relevant found, just stories, no solution

Is there any fix for it? Somewhere i can get the drivers?

Any way that does not include formatting it, is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

here are some other answers to the question, it's a duplicate in fact.

duplicate question

i really hate assisting in a hard drive death. It's painful lossing your precious data, and having nothing to do to gain them back, especially if they were ment to safe in that external dead hdd, it was ment to be a backup.

Best regards everyone

Answer 2

You can't access the device from SuSE? This is bad...the HDD is maybe damaged and can't be restored.

These are steps I'd take, I can't say if it works and I can't guarantee that this is working or if it is doing even more damage!

Try to access the HDD in Windows, now check the system logs for any error messages. If there are I/O errors, you're screwed, the HDD would be damaged and data is probably already lost. You could try restoring the data, or contact someone who has experience with doing so. Any other messages post here.