I'm trying to help a friend, who has had an external USB hard drive fail. They had backups of some, but not all, of the files on it, and would really like to recover some of the contents. (Yes, I have lectured them on the importance of backing up key data in multiple locations).

The drive is a 3.0 WD MyBook, with a USB 3.0 connection.

It spins up OK, and makes all the right noises with the flashing light on the front etc. I can tell from the sound and feel that the drive is spinning. It also causes his machine (Windows Vista) to make the appropriate "ding-dong" noise when it's plugged in, and it shows up in device manager which proudly declares that the drive is working properly. The drive is also up to date.

However, it freezes instances of explorer when it is turned on, and never gets assigned a drive letter or shows up in explorer. Also, the WD Diagnostics program won't run when the drive is powered on, but runs fine if it isn't.

I don't think it is impact damage or similar, as he assures me the drive hasn't been dropped or even moved recently.

I have a spare disk they can use to copy the files off to if they can mount the problematic drive just once, and they would quite like to get some of their digital photos off it (including a few of a deceased relative).

When I popped round today I tried (with no luck):
- using a different USB cable
- using a different USB port
- using my laptop instead of their desktop.

Short of forensic recovery, which I doubt they can afford, is there anything else obvious I can try? If I have time I may pop round tomorrow, otherwise if I can think of anything further to try I will have a crack at it for them next weekend.

I had a similar thing happen to two WD USB drives (a 2.0TB and a 1.5TB) myself, about one and two years ago respectively. The symptoms were pretty much identical, but I just binned them rather than getting too experimental as drives are fairly cheap and the contents were duplicated on other drives. However, I'm starting to wonder if there is something systemically wrong with WD drives.

This sort of think isn't really my forte, but I'm trying to help as I'm a bit more computer literate than he is.

On behalf of my mate, any sensible suggestions greatly received.