Western Digital 1TB Elements External Hard Drive

[davidjearly]

I have the above drive, which I use for all my media (Music and Movies). I have never had a problem with it until today.

I powered the drive on at the mains and it makes a normal 'spinning up' noise, before cutting out after 5-10 seconds. It is not recognised in OS X or disk utility (it doesn't show up at all).

Is there anything that can be done to rescue the files that were on it? Could it be a power unit inside the drive that is gone which could be replaced or is the whole thing dead?

Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks,
David

P.S. Please do not respond just to say 'I hope you have a backup'.

 

[DewGuy1999]

If you're sure the unit is dead, you could open the case, take the actual hard drive out and put it into a different external enclosure. All this assumes the actual hard drive is still good and just the original enclosure has gone bad.

 

[Davowade]

Yeah sounds to me like the drive is OK but the enclosure is gone.
To be safe keep it powered off and get a new enclosure, then grab the data off it ASAP in case there is an underlying problem with the drive.