WD External HD Unaccessable

[technomoonboots]

Hello!

I have A WD500BMVV-11GNWS0 hard drive. PCB 2061-701675-604 04P.
When I plug it in to the PC via micro usb I get a solid LED light on the HD and it spins up just fine without any noise. Then after about a minute I head a loud click and then the LED light starts blinking. After about 6 minutes Windows will recognize the drive and opens a new window that shows the root directory but than after that I am unable to go any further as the drive seems to freeze and then Windows says the usb not recognized/malfunctions. After a few more minutes the drive clicks again and spins down. When I unplug it via micro usb windows does make the noise that something has been disconnected so obviously it recognizes that there is a device attached. It does not show up in Disk Management. One out of 30 times I may recognize the driver sooner and I might be able to view one folder deep but then just freezes again and windows says it's malfunctioned.

Any ideas on what might be wrong and how to repair it? Thanks.

 

[Jared]

The drive either has a weak/failed read-write head, or it has a malfunction of the firmware related to the bad sector reallocation functions. DIY repair will be very difficult to nearly impossible without access to tools like PC-3000 to properly diagnose and correct the issue.

Is the data of any real value? It can certainly be recovered by a lab, we handle these all the time. But it'll cost a few hundred dollars at the very least.

 

[technomoonboots]

Drive broke about 10 years ago. Only thing worth keeping was some old photos on it but i am not that sentimental. Lived without it this long.