I have a 500 GB WD Elements external hard drive. It sometimes won't be recognized by my desktop and now it won't even power on when plugged in. Does anyone know of a fix or should I just replace it? If I have to get a new one, any suggestions on a model? Thanks in advance to any & all advice.
if it is under warranty maybe you can get it exchanged. More than likely the electronics on the enclosure went bad, the hard drive is probably still good. Those rarely go bad unless you dropped it while it was spinning. If your data is valuable you can always remove the drive and buy an external enclosure (cost about $20.00) and that'll fix it. I build my own external hard drives, I built about 6 of them (i reuse all my old hard drives), they work fine as good as what you buy at the store prebuilt. That's what I recommend, unless there is a real good deal on a prebuilt external.
the drive itself might be alright but the drive enclosure might be dead. if not under warranty then open it up & see if can be connected internally to your pc to see if it powersup & is seen by the computer. if it is seen then get another drive enclosure.
I didn't drop it and I used it quite a bit. I kept it plugged in and connected to my PC. Could this have been a factor?
