A customer brought this Western Digital external hard drive to us as it wasn’t being recognised by their PC.
The most likely cause of this- and indeed, the most common fault with external hard drives- is that the USB interface (rather than the drive itself) had stopped working. This used to be a simple repair because most external hard drives were little more than internal SATA drives- either 2.5″ laptop or 3.5″ desktop size- with a case and USB interface attached. Once the case was opened, the SATA drive could be unplugged from the USB interface and put in a new enclosure (essentially just a replacement interface and case) that could be bought for less than £10.
