I/O error on plugging WB My book essential :(

guys need help, when i plug my external hdd, my laptop cannot access it, i tried plugging my hdd to another laptop and it also doesnt work, although when i plug it, its responding, and the 'safely remove device' icon was showing at the bottom right of desktop, i tried device manager check and it detects my external hdd, although its saying not allocated or something, please advice guys, thanks

 

Do you have a Y USB cable, maybe the drive is not receiving enough power.

 

none, but i tried the shorter usb cable, but cant find a shorter power supply

 

Oh, wait that is a 3.5" drive with it's own PSU, my bad I tend to assume 2.5" often and it bit me in the rear this time. I kinda read your original post in diagonal since I was short on time, sorry.

Since it says the space is unallocated, it is likely that the drive hasn't been formatted yet. You'll need to go into disk management and format the drive if it hasn't been. The drive will show up as being unallocated if it hasn't been formatted yet. Typing disk management in the start menu search bar should allow you to access the disk management utility. If you're on Windows 8, it is available in the right click menu of the left bottom corner. From there, you can format the drive, if you're only going to use it with Windows computers, format it in NTFS.

 

i forgot also, whenever i do that 'initialize disk' on allocation from disk management, it gives me an I/O input device error

 

Er, if you want to be keeping your data on the disk you shouldn't be clicking on 'initialize disk'

What was the last computer that you accessed the disk from? Does it work there?

If not, there's basically a random chance that either the hard disk or the enclosure has died, and you want to bet on it being the enclosure.

What you can do is break open the plastic enclosure (search for 'disassemble my book' -- here's an example) and then take the hard drive and put it into a different enclosure.

 

sorry im noobish on these things, but that's the only option available, having clicked the 'initialize disk' still nothing happened, it can sense my hard drive, have checked device manager and can see my WD software (or hardware) along with it, its just 3 days when it happened, im using my external hdd good and solid, but now somehow its near brick status, its responding whenever i plug/unplug it in my laptop,

uh wait, enclosure you mean the hdd casing?

 

Yes sir. You should be able to find a teardown guide for it. I have my audio muted at work, but this video seemed decent.

 

sigh, no improvement, is there any kind of software that could recover my external hdd or detect it or something?

 

Detect it? Not necessarily. Recover: maybe, if you mean recover the data off of it. Search for data recovery programs, such as Recuva. There are quite a few available.