Windows 10: External hard drive is inaccessible

I apologize for necroing this thread, but, I didn't want to make another thread when all the necessary information is already in this thread. I waited until Black Friday to purchase the necessary equipment as I'm on a really tight budget this year.

Back to the main topic, I followed the directions in the user's manual that came with the equipment and connected the hard drive to the SATA to USB adapter, then from the adapter to the computer. Afterwards, I flipped the switch to power the hard drive.

It showed up just fine in This PC, and I could access the folders inside, but, when I tried to open a file, it stalled and when I tried to view it in Disk Management, the connection disconnected and I can't find the hard drive anywhere. I tried to redo the steps again, but, the same thing happened.
Any ideas?

 

Looks like the hard disk has a problem. Try recovering your data with a utility such as Recuva and copy to another drive. This utility can access data sector-by-sector without depending on the partition table, so it can recover most of your data, provided they are not corrupt by bad sectors. Then check your disk for errors with a utility such as WD Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. If it has problems you should replace it. At least you can use it for non-important storage. Don't use it for Windows.

 

Thank you for the response, spapakons. I will try that, but, there's just one problem: how can I do that if the hard drive doesn't show up on computer at all? After my two attempts to connect the hard drive to the computer it hasn't shown up anywhere on my computer and I'm a little too scared to try again in case I ruin it even further.

 

Since it is a SATA try connecting directly to a computer as a second disk and do the recovery from there. If it doesn't show at all, ask for professional help.