please help recover damaged hard drive

[gib88]

Hello,

I have an external drive that's been damaged. When I plug it into my computer, it recognizes it as "My Passport 259F". But it won't mount it. I can't really do anything with it except see that it's there.

I'm wondering if someone can help me troubleshoot this. Really, all I want to do is try to get the data off it. What can I try?

Thank you.

 

[BK_123]

If you look in disk management does Windows recognize it in there? If not you should be able to use Ubuntu or another Linux distro to be able see it and recover files.

 

[gib88]

Device Manager seems to recognize it.

Does this mean the content is salvageable?

 

[BK_123]

Well that's a sign that the Windows is detecting it in device manager. Right click the start button then disk management then you should see something like below

 

[gib88]

Oh, you really mean "disk management". Thanks for showing me how to get there.

Here's what shows up:

The drive shows up as "Disk 1 Uknown - Not Initialized". Right-clicking on it gives me the option to initialize it. I will try that.

 

[gib88]

Initializing didn't work. It tells me: "The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error."