Hi everyone, I have a WD 5 TB external hard drive (Model, wdc-wd50ndzw 11a8js1 5tb). Bought it around 4 years back, never thought it will go so soon. It has a lot of personal pictures and videos from the last 5 years without any backup. It was working fine till 2 days back when i tried to extract a zip (downloaded from google drive) on the hard drive and it suddenly stopped working. I then disconnected it and tried reconnecting it, but now windows froze completely when i connected it. I tried restarting my PC and still the same issue persisted, whenever i try to connect it, windows 11 freeze and the drive shows as Local Disk without any thing else. (screenshot attached)

So, there was a suggestion that you should live boot Linux and try connecting it in Linux. I live booted Ubuntu and connected the hard drive there. Linux also was not able to open it. But, it showed the partition along with some information. I have attached screenshots of them.

I am just scared if the hard drive is gone. I have in total tried to connect it 5 times in total after it stopped working and I don't want to do it more as i am afraid I would damage it more.

**Some Questions:**

1. What should i do next to recover my data? and how much is the probability of recovering data?
2. Is there a chance of physical damage on the drive? The hard drive was spinning last time i tried to connect it on Linux? It doesn't make any sound apart from when i tried to disconnect it. There was a click sound on disconnecting.
3. I am considering professional recovery but I am based out of India and I am not sure how much can i trust data recovery labs in India in terms of competence. Last time i tried [https://www.techchef.in](https://www.techchef.in/) around 3 years back but they were not able to recover hard drive. I have an option of sending hard drive to US through my friend. Should i do that. And if yes, which service is best in USA. I am not that worried about price, all i want is to recover data. My budget is around 3k $.

Thanks in advance for reading this. I would be really thankful for your comments.

5 years worth of pictures, videos gone, need help in recovering External WD 5 TB HDD