How-To Geek

Hi there,
I have a problem with my external hard drive, its a WD Elements SE 1TB and its not being recognized by Windows (running Windows 7). Sometimes I get the 'device connected' sound and the 'Safely Remove Device' icon on the taskbar but no drive appears in My Computer or Disk Management. Also, attempting a Safe Removal just hangs until I disconnect the drive.

I found this thread which regards the same hard drive model and offers different solutions that mostly require electrical engineering and that truthfully I don't completely understand, I'm a Software Engineer but I may find a friend who can help me with that part, I would just like to know which direction to take this in order to get access to my files.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Yes, I tried it in another Windows 7 machine and in Ubuntu but it didn't work.
I just tried it again in my own computer, a "Local Drive" appeared on 'My Computer' but I can't access it. First I get a message saying I need to format the drive, then the error: "E:\ is not accesible. Data error (Cyclic redundancy check) ".

This is what appears in Disk Manager:

Thanks for the reply Lighthouse, I can see my drive there and it shows 100% used, can that be the problem? I can even view all my files using the 'Explore Partition' option but I don't see how I can delete or move individual files, is Copying the entire partition my only option to recover my files? or is there something I can do to fix whatever is preventing Windows from mounting it correctly? I ran the Check File System Option (check only) and got a bunch of 'File record segment X is unreadable' is it safe to try to fix those errors with the same command?

If you are referring to disk1 from your post of disk Management, it shows 931.51 Gb Raw. Your file system is corrupt and needs to be formatted to NTFS.
If PW allows you to see all your files check and see if there is a way to recover them otherwise you will lose everything