WD caviar drive knackered

[#1]

i've got a western digital elements 2TB external drive (which is just a WD Caviar Green 2TB drive in an enclosure).
the drive has essentially went phut.
windows/mac detects it as a drive, but can't really do anything else with it.
doesn't seem to want to format.
are there any tools i can use to see if the drive is salvageable in any way?
i have windows 8.1 64-bit, mac osx 10.10 and windows xp (via vmware) available to use for testing it.

[#2]

Assuming it's a few years old and can't be returned...
It could be the enclosure.
Try swapping in an alternative drive of any size, but of the same type (SATA) etc...
Or connect a SATA cable and power the disk direct from your motherboard.

[#3]

it's not the enclosure.

[#4]

Spinrite might be able to recover some of it.

[#5]

There's a lot of hype around Spinrite that I'm not convinced by - and it costs a bit to find out.  'Recuva' is a free recovery tool: https://www.piriform.com/recuva

[#6]

The WD Green drives are junk, they're prone to early failure due to their excessive "power saving" measures, resulting in slow performance and ultimately complete failure, use either the Blue drives for storage, Blacks for performance (OS drive, gaming, etc.), and the Reds are for server storage (constantly on, always operating), the greens, nah, don't touch them...

[#7]

i'm not concerned about data recovery, i'm just trying to get the drive to be operational (in some way) again.
with regards to it being a green drive, well i didn't know what was inside the enclosure when i bought it. it was only when i took the drive out the enclosure after the failure that i saw it was a green drive.

[#8]

This may sound mad but give the entire side of the HD a sharp dunt on the floor. Then plug it back in and try it. Why? Well ages ago I had a similar issue with an HDD and while I was removing from my test gear it it fell off my knees sideways on to the floor. Thinking I'd totally broken it I plugged it in, and it work and is still working to this day!

[#9]

Quote from: chenks76

with regards to it being a green drive, well i didn't know what was inside the enclosure when i bought it.

That's why I put together my own external HDDs, buying a decent caddy, a suitable drive, and couple of screws and instant external HDD...
The drive on the back of my TV was made in such a fashion, using a caddy I picked up from PC world and the hard drive out of a duff (well, not technically duff, but duff due to the sky tax required to use it as a PVR it's a useless) sky+HD box, that said the drive's a bit pants being a seagate, but, does the job so long as I don't try fast forwarding or rewinding more than x2 speed...

[#10]

i'm not concerned about data recovery, i'm just trying to get the drive to be operational (in some way) again.
I'd be very loath to try to use a drive in that state even if I did manage to recover it, except maybe in highly non-critical situations.

[#11]

so back to the original point of the thread.
other than dropping the HDD on the floor are there any other tools than can look at the drive and report what the problem(s) might be.
data recovery is not on the agenda, it's just so i can see what the issue is/was and see if it's salvageable.

[#12]

As you are not interested in recovering the data on the disc then sticking it in the freezer probably won't help http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux

[#13]

Quote from: chenks76

are there any other tools than can look at the drive and report what the problem(s) might be.

Well, there's always WD's Data Lifeguard Diagnostics:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=612&sid=3
It'll run tests on the drive and will say that it's burgered, but considering you can't operate it, then it's kind of barn-door...
The only thing left, see if it's still in warranty and if it is, RMA it for a replacement:
http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index.asp?lang=en
If not in warranty, pull the (un)Green drive out of the caddy and replace it with a Blue or Black...

[#14]

warranty ran out last year

[#15]

Quote from: vilefoxdemonofdoom

Assuming it's a few years old and can't be returned... It could be the enclosure. Try swapping in an alternative drive of any size, but of the same type (SATA) etc... Or connect a SATA cable and power the disk direct from your motherboard.