Windows 10: External HDD dead/dying - potential revival/recovery/optimization?

Hey!

I've had this external HDD for close to a year, and to be fair I haven't been as careful with it as I should have been. The HDD has "died" on me two times earlier, this being my third time struggling with it. 99% of the time it won't be recognized or even start up, but a couple of minutes ago it suddenly decided to start up and show me the stored files. I tried to copy some important folders over to my desktop, but it did not respond at all.

Disk manager refused to boot up every single time I tried, but device manager did recognize the drive.
After a couple tries the HDD disconnected.

Even when the disk was connected none of my HDD recovery software recognized the disk except for Recuva, but the disk sadly disconnected when Recuva was starting up (could be the reason for it disconnecting I suppose).

If I manage to get the HDD to be recognized again, is there any way for me to get it into working condition, or should I simply try to format it? How would I get the important folders copied if the HDD doesn't respond at all (other than browsing the files etc.)?

I am a bit stumped as to what I should do as it could be a lot of different things. The symptoms of the drive varies, though I suspect the electronic part of the HDD is faulty.

Any help/thoughts on the matter would be very much appreciated!

Edit; The HDD often appears with a yellow warning triangle then disappears again. Only visible in device manager.

:)

 

Secondary HDD not found by Optimize and Defrag

Hello,

Upgraded to Win10 a few weeks ago. I have a 240G primary SSD (C and 1TB internal secondary HDD (E, plus a 1TB external USB backup drive (J. I wanted to determine why the internal 1TB HDD seems to have some 'missing' space so I opened Optimize Drives.
But Optimize Drives only lists the SSD (C, USB drive (J and a System Reserved drive. It doesn't list the internal 1TB HDD.

So far my searches have turned up problems where extra drives aren't recognized at all, but mine works fine for everything else (I've moved Libraries there, created system images there, it shows in Explorer, etc.)

Edit: Device Manager indicates no issues with the drive. I've also right-clicked from Explorer > Properties > Tools > Optimize, and the list is still missing this drive.

Can anyone explain this or provide a solution?

Thank you!

Stephen

 

Optime Drive - Doesn't Recognize External Hard Drive

When I Select "Defragment and Optimize Drives" my external USB 3.0 hard drive is not among the drives listed that can be analyzed or optimized. The reply to another similar post suggested reading and following the recommendations in a separate
article "Optimize Windows for better performance" which I did but found no useful information there. Any other suggestions
or alternatives?

 

upgrading with a dead HDD

My 8.1 laptop has a dead HDD. I do not have Recovery DVDs.

How will I get W10 installed when I get my new HDD?